Let’s hope it is never needed. Coweta County commissioners Dec. 4 deferred a decision on a Memorandum of Agreement with Georgia Division of Public Health (DPH) District 4 to facilitate local and regional pandemic influenza planning, plan evaluation and the exercising of those plans.

In the agreement, DPH Dist. 4 will provide Coweta with $10,000 it obtained in federal funds from the Emergency Preparedness Pandemic Influenza Planning Program and will provide an up-to-date response plan that will reflect the Public Health Priority Outcomes of prevention, health, promotion and protection, said Dist. 4 Emergency Preparedness Director Charles Reneau in a letter to the board.

DPH will also support local community partners by providing written and technical assistance as requested. Grant stipulations require that the funds obtained by used only for developing and furthering the development of pandemic flu All-Hazards plans and assessing the efficacy of those plans, Reneau said.

For its part, Coweta would agree to establish an All-Hazards Emergency Coordinating Committee representing all stakeholders, support the development of community-based plans and exercises, and appoint an elected official to the All-Hazards Planning Board.

The county would also agree to schedule an exercise within 6 months and to support an on-going program of planning and evaluation for a community-based response.

While the potential for an influenza pandemic is not often seen as a high likelihood in the United States, the reality is that the H5N1 strain of influenza virus has proven to be one of the most virulent killers ever encountered in recorded history.

The H5N1 strain was first confirmed in limited locations in southeast Asia and has spread over a much greater portion of that region and into north Africa in recent years.

Epidemiologists worldwide have been alarmed at the extremely high mortality rate that accompanies H5N1 infection. What was a critically high death rate of 55 percent in 2003-2004 has now advanced to more than 63 percent in 2008. That mortality rate puts H5N1 on the scale with the Ebola virus as the world’s most virulent killers.

The reason communities and states across America, and across the globe, have held pandemic flu exercises and table-top preparedness drills is due to what is perhaps the most worrisome specter involving H5N1: the clear potential for sustained human-to-human transmission and, hence, a rapidly spreading virus that cannot be controlled.

Rare cases of human-to-human transmission have been documented, such as the case of several family members in Sumatra dying after only one family member came in contact with an infected chicken.

Epidemiologists fear that if the strain mutates from human to human sufficiently it could set off a pandemic. Today’s frequent global travel and the incubation period noted with H5N1 greatly exacerbates that probability.

U.S. government officials have long estimated that such a pandemic would result in a 40 percent workforce outage for many months and a significant disruption to the economy.

The H1N1 strain of influenza that caused the “Spanish Flu” pandemic in 1918-1919 infected 25 percent of the American population. Perhaps a blessing in disguise, the mortality rate was only 2.5 percent but still resulted in the deaths of approximately 650,000 Americans.

Reneau has long maintained that preparedness is a wise course of action for any community.

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