Pandemic would threaten regional response

The sky is not falling – yet.

Talk to anyone involved in preparation for a flu pandemic and they’ll admit it’s not easy getting people to take seriously the idea of a raging influenza epidemic.

But this isn’t about a few more people than normal being home sick for a few extra days. No, we’re talking about businesses shutting down, basic necessities of life interrupted, hospitals overwhelmed and people dying.

Lots of people dying.

Very few people alive today remember the so-called “Spanish Influenza” of 1918 that killed more than a half million people in the United States and an estimated 50 million worldwide.

But many may recall the Asian flu of 1957-58 that killed about 68,000 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 that caused an estimated 34,000 deaths – all in the United States.

Because flu viruses are constantly mutating, there’s no telling when the next big lethal outbreak will occur. Some predict that a sudden mutation of the avian flu now infecting birds mostly in Asia could cause it to jump to humans and perhaps result in waves of deadly flu that could kill untold numbers of people across the planet.

If that sounds scary, it’s because it is. And because pandemics roll around with frightening regularity.

Adrienne LeBailly, M.D., director of the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment, said Northern Colorado is in its second year of pandemic preparedness and still does not yet have a fully developed response plan.

“A lot of it is still in the draft stages,” LeBailly said. “We’ve been struggling over how to create (an) incident command structure, for one thing. Nobody has the funding to give up what they’re doing and work on this, and that’s because maybe it won’t happen for another 10 years. On the other hand, it could happen tomorrow.”

LeBailly said a full-fledged pandemic would sweep through the region and cause almost unimaginable problems, from overwhelming funeral homes to closing schools for weeks and what that would mean for employees who need to stay home with their kids – sick or otherwise.

In June 2006, representatives of local health, government, business and other sectors gathered for a pandemic flu retreat to begin formulating a response. Since then, brochures and Web sites have been developed and presentations made to get the word out.

LeBailly said she’s been heartened by the response of some big businesses but notes that small businesses in general are still not on board when it comes to pandemic preparedness.

“On the small business side, not much has happened and there’s an attitude of operating on a small margin and that they’ll just have to close the doors if something happens,” she said.

Hospital plans

And there’s just so much that hospitals can do. Gene Haffner, spokesman for North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, said NCMC has an ongoing emergency preparedness plan and “a very defined structure and very defined roles in that process.”

Those roles are refined through ongoing exercises that explore the hospital’s strengths and weaknesses in dealing with various possible situations. But a major pandemic would no doubt cause serious problems, he acknowledges.

“The available hospital beds might very well get used up very quickly,” he said.

LeBailly said one of the areas that still needs work is cross-border cooperation between hospitals and other health-care facilities. “We’ve talked about regionalization of health care,” she said. “We’ve not done a lot of cross-border planning, but we do realize that we need cooperation from all hospitals in the region.”

Hospitals would “absolutely” be overwhelmed by a true pandemic, LeBailly said, requiring the setting up of “alternative care centers,” such as hotels or motels that might have to be enlisted to offer some isolated treatment for patients who could not be admitted into a hospital.

LeBailly said Hurricane Katrina and its effect on New Orleans’ ability to cope should be a reminder of what might happen in a pandemic.

“The effort (to plan for such an event) is mindboggling, but I don’t want to see Larimer County looking like the Superdome during Katrina,” she said.

With an effective pandemic vaccine likely to take weeks if not months to develop, LeBailly said the focus is on planning for dealing with a pandemic without a vaccine. That’s going to mean a variety of unpleasant scenarios – including high numbers of deaths and devastated businesses – to deal with until the vaccine arrives.

“That’s why there’s a tendency to not think about it,” she said. “But I think Katrina was what drove home the idea that the unthinkable can happen and you need to plan for it and you’ll do better if you do plan than if you didn’t.”  

Steve Porter covers health-care issues for the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at 970-221-5400, ext. 225, or at sporter@ncbr.com.

on Facebook on LinkedIn