June 4th, 2007
I guess there comes a time in a blog’s life when the end is near and inevitable. For Flu Patrol, that day has come.
Flu Patrol made its final bow on May 31, 2007.
Not that the issue of flu, bird flu or a pandemic are not anymore relevant. In fact, recent news and focus by the governments testify that it’s hardly waning. Unfortunately, it has become harder for me to provide readers with the content they need to keep abreast of the news and be intelligently informed about flu.
To those who follow this blog, my deepest thanks to you. I would like to lead you over to the list of flu blogs below. Hope you enjoy following them as much as I do -
1. Avian Flu Diary
2. H5N1
3. Effect Measures (public health blog)
4. Pandemic Flu Forum (a five-week blog running through June)
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May 31st, 2007
Blood from flu survivors is a potential source of bird flu treatment.
Antibodies culled from four Vietnamese infected in 2004, and injected into animal models exposed to H5N1 found that the mice did not get bird flu. An international team of scientists headed by Dr. Antonio Lanzavecchia culled antibody-producing cells from the survivors’ blood and induced the cells to keep producing the immune molecules. The team found that the antiboides protected against bird flu both from the 2004 strain and against a different H5N1 strain from 2005.
Read more about the news here.
[source: worldlink]
Tags: bird flu, antibodies, therapy
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May 31st, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone. The bloggers are a diverse group of leaders from various sectors of society.
Week 2 asks this question of the blog participants:
What are my constituents concerns? How can I play an important role in communicating the need to prepare?
Michael Coston, retired medic and founder of the Avian Flu Diary shares his thoughts on our roles, as ordinary citizens, in preparing for a pandemic. He begins with a history lesson from World War II when America was mobilized as a nation.
Millions of men and women enlisted in the army. But more than than, millions more joined the war effort on the homefront -
Housewives took off their aprons and donned tool belts, went to work in shipyards and airplane factories, and the legend of Rosie the Riveter was born. Ordinary citizens, many too old for active service, volunteered to become block wardens and aircraft spotters. Teenagers rolled bandages or served donuts for the Red Cross, and volunteers worked in VA hospitals and USO clubs around the nation. Everyone recycled for the war effort, housewives collected grease, and people accepted the need for ration coupons and meatless Tuesdays.
During WWII, there were people called ‘dollar-a-year-men‘, business executives and community leaders who served their nations at little or no pay.
Coston iterates that we need to be having that same mindset in the present time. Some of the ways ordinary citizens can put this mindset on the larger public are the following:
1. Utilize ‘flubies’, members of of flu forums who already are well informed, passionate, and ahead of the curve on pandemic preparation.
2. Send the message out through community town hall style meetings all across the country.
3. Utilize retired medical personnel - doctors, medics, nurses, who can teach home flu care and preventative hygiene classes in our communities.
4. Mobilize community volunteers - ” along the lines of a State or Federally sanctioned Volunteer Pandemic Corps, where citizens can band together to help their communities solve local problems.”
5. And Coston’s personal commitment -
“It is my hope we can create an army of graying volunteers, thin of hair, but not of spirit, to do those jobs during a pandemic we wouldn’t wish upon our children.”
Way to go!
Tags: pandemic flu, forum, leadership blog, HHS
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May 31st, 2007
A 19-year old Chinese soldier was diagnosed with the highly pathogenic bird flu strain H5N1 last week, the Chinese Ministry of Health confirmed.
Obviously, the Chinese government is keeping a close watch on this case and ordered the army to monitor all who have come in contact with the soldier, who is serving in the Fujian province. According to a statement from the World Health Organization, there is no initial indication to suggest he had contact with sick birds prior to becoming unwell.
[source: physorg.com; WHO]
Tags: China, bird flu, human case
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By Grace -- 0 comments
May 31st, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone. The bloggers are a diverse group of leaders from various sectors of society.
Week 2 asks this question of the blog participants:
What are my constituents concerns? How can I play an important role in communicating the need to prepare?
Greg Dworkin, founding editor of the Flu Wiki, summarized important points from the first week’s discussion -
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The information about pandemics does not seem to be disseminating as well as it needs to, at least up until now.
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There is a role for government, using its authority, in disseminating information (and in legitimizing others to do so).
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Once legitimized, there is also a role and responsibility for community leaders and members to disseminate information, using whatever social and professional networks are available.
Tags: flu, pandemic, leadership forum
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May 28th, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone.
Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman of Ebay, posts about “Why care, why prepare?” from his perspective as individual member of society. His points -
1. No matter what gets done at a global level, hospitals and health care may not be there for us when we need it in a pandemic.
2. Families and neighborhoods will be on their own during a severe pandemic.
3. We can’t expect government to tell us what to do.
4. We have to look to ourselves and each other to make it through.
5. Learn as much as we can and think about how we might react should a pandemic occur.
Tags: pandemic flu, preparedness, pandemiv flu leadership blog
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May 28th, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone.
Rebecca Patton of the American Nurses Association presents several interesting and practical ways of improving the health care system before a pandemic disaster strikes.
1. Change where we birth most babies. Plans should be made to expand opportunities for out-of-hospital home of birthing-center deliveries. There is no need for healthy pregnant women to go to a hospital already overwhelmed by influenza patients.
2. Provide health care workers sufficient emergency supplies such as respirators and personal protective equipment.
I would add all medical facilities need to be up to speed with pandemic emergency preparedness and well-stocked with pandemic flu supplies. Pediatric and family clinics especially need to be in the loop, because most individuals will bring themselves and their families to smaller, probably less equipped clinics for flu-like symptoms.
Tags: pandemic flu, preparedness, pandemic flu leadership forum
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May 27th, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone.
Albert Ruesga’s contribution “Lessons from Katrina” is a post that brought pandemic preparation in a different light. Here’s why -
… (Hurricane Katrian Disaster) didn’t affect all populations equally. The poor, the elderly, and the infirm were hardest hit, populations least able to shelter properly, or flee, or recover from the storm’s devastating effects.
Likewise, while a flu pandemic can affect anyone, at any income level, those of us who are not already weakened by food insecurity, who have access to quality health care, who can afford to stay home from work to avoid infection—have a much better chance of surviving.
Ruesga point is that if America is to effectively prepare for a pandemic, then the Administration “must bolser - rather than dismantle - the safety net for the poor”, the demographic having the least chances of survival.
He urges President Bush’s adminstration NOT to cut the domestic discretionary spending, including health care services which are aimed at helping the most vulnerable group.
Tags: pandemic, preparedness, hurricane Katrina
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By Grace -- 0 comments
May 27th, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone.
Nedra Weinreich of Spare Change talks about “Preparing for Persuasion”. The toughest part of pandemic preparation is getting the community involved and “putting the pandemic into the public consciousness” enough for them to want to make changes. How do we persuade people to do the right thing?
1. Education. Provide facts and statistics about pandemic and bird flu.
2. Coersion by passing laws or enacting policies. It may be necessary to enforce quarantines.
3. Social marketing. Appeal to a person’s values and emotions by “selling” the desired bahaviors. “The marketing approach also offers us a strategic way to think through all the aspects of convincing someone to take action”.
Tags: pandemic flu, preparedness, pandemic flu leadership forum
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By Grace -- 0 comments
May 26th, 2007
The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone.
The blog was launched on May 22 and already have several intelligent debate and comments going back and forth.
Week 1 of the HHS Pandemic Flu leadership blog tackled the need to prepare.
Why should we, as Americans, be concerned about personal preparedness for pandemic influenza? Why is it important that individuals commit to prepare? Why is this particularly important to me, as a community, business/labor, religious, or healthcare leader?
One of the bloggers to tackle this question was Michael Coston of the Avian Flu Diary posting about “Using our time wisely” and I’d like to highlight some of the important points that he raises and issues that we still have to face.
1. The H5N1 virus continues to mutate, spread, infect new hosts. Scientists are no less concerned today than they were a year ago and study the viral evolution closerly.
2. We have the ability to observe this virus as it evolves and moves toward a pandemic strain. Which means,
3. We have the unique opportunity to prepare well. Unlike the generations past.
4. Unless the idea of a pandemic becomes part of public consciousness, the idea of preparing is unlikely to gain traction.
5. A pandemic WILL happen. and it will be ‘very, very bad’. Pandemics, on average, occurs every 30 to 40 years. It’s been 39 years since the last one. Over the past 300 years, we have seen 10 pandemics. Nothing indicates that this will change.
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