By KEVIN FREKING
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Local health officials presented a bird flu shopping list to the federal government Monday that included face masks, oxygen equipment, IVs and other supplies.
The federal bird flu plan emphasizes the development of a vaccine and international surveillance, but it places too little emphasis on providing them with the equipment and supplies they would need to treat masses of sick people, the officials told congressional staff members.
“I think we need to look seriously at matching the development of vaccines and antivirals with the means of making sure they can be distributed,” said Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “
The officials also briefed staffers on some of the innovative approaches that communities have undertaken to prepare for a pandemic. For instance, Marty Fenstersheib, the health officer for the Santa Clara, Calif., County Department of Public Health, said his community is developing a three-step triage system.
The county’s 2,300 hospital beds would be filled in about three weeks during a serious pandemic, so most patients would be treated in their homes, Fenstersheib said. Sicker patients would be sent to “influenza care centers” in places such as hotel ballrooms. Only the sickest of the sick would get care at the hospital.
“Hospitals have told us to keep people away from our rooms, keep them away from our facilities as best you can,” he said.
Fenstersheib said the California hospitals believe they can use cafeterias, hallways and other space to increase their bed capacity by 10 or 12 percent. They also would send home people scheduled for elective surgery.
“It’s still not going to be enough. We’ll still need people taken care of at home and at alternative care sites,” he said.
Dorothy Teeter, a public health officer from Washington, said her agency has been working with businesses to ensure they have contingency plans for staff shortages, or for isolating sick workers. But she said that health officials also have doubts about their ability to deal with a pandemic when they don’t have on hand any of the extra medical supplies that would be needed. With such equipment, health officials “would feel way more sure we can do this,” she said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has visited several states in recent months to talk about bird flu preparation. One of the first things he tells listeners is that any community that fails to prepare for a pandemic and expects the federal government to come to the rescue “will be tragically wrong.”
Congress provided the department with about $3.3 billion this year to improve the nation’s bird flu preparedness. In December, Leavitt announced that $100 million would be going to the states for planning efforts. Each state got a minimum of $500,000. Another $250 million is supposed to go out later this year.
“Vaccines are the answer to dealing with a pandemic,” said HHS spokesman Bill Hall. “That’s the ultimate answer to combatting a pandemic. Today, should a pandemic occur, the United States doesn’t have the domestic capability to produce quickly enough a vaccine for all Americans.”
Libbey said local health departments see the largest share of dollars going to drug manufacturers for vaccine development and wonder if the appropriate balance is being struck. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency responds to natural disasters because there is an expectation that such disasters are beyond the scale of local government.
“We have to think of a health issue on the magnitude of a pandemic as a parallel to that,” Libbey said.
On the Net:
National Association of County and City Health Officials: http:http://www.naccho.org
Officials U.S. government site on bird flu: http://www.pandemicflu.gov