Flu Pandemic Planning
There’s much truth in the old adage ‘fail to plan, plan to fail’, which could explain why our recent first flu pandemic planning user group meeting at our London conference suite proved so successful. Of course it could also be that the potential scale of the problem is enormous.
The well documented influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 accounted for some 40 to 50 million deaths worldwide, and we’ve seen two further influenza pandemics since then, in 1957 and 1968. Each time a new strain of influenza A virus subtype emerges, which is markedly different from previous strains, there is a risk of a pandemic, as there undoubtedly is now with the avian influenza A/H5N1 strain.
Not surprisingly then, HR professionals from a number of large NHS trusts and PCTs joined us to discuss how FirstCare can assist with flu pandemic planning, drawing from information, guidance and advice from the Health Protection Agency’s HPA Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan, which was established in 2005 and updated in 2006, in response to the threat of avian flu.
The session provided some helpful insights that will allow us to tailor our service to meet the needs of individual clients. Several expressed an interested in developing the service to accommodate bespoke alerting and communication strategies, and we’ll continue to work with them on this in a series of planning meetings.
If you would like to be involved in the planning committee or would like to be kept up to date with the progress
please contact us.