Planning for flu pandemic involves Meals on Wheels

[Guest guest]

Planning for flu pandemic involves even Meals on Wheels

Associated Press Eagle-Tribune

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Meals on Wheels delivers 850 meals a day in

Rockingham County, relying on 35-40 drivers and hundreds of volunteers

who package the food for delivery.

What happens if these folks get sick in a flu pandemic? Will elders go

hungry?

The New Horizons shelter for men and Angie's Shelter for women in

Manchester typically serve 95-120 people a night with a staff of 17,

three of whom work overnight. If their staff is ill, where will the

homeless go?

This is when statewide avian flu planning gets down to the nuts and bolts.

Like all states, New Hampshire has been involved in making plans

should a new flu strain or other contagious disease strike large

numbers of people.

The state's efforts led to a 99-page document on pandemic preparedness

that talks about how state health officials, hospitals and the state

Emergency Operations Center will work together.

Another fat document looks at the numbers of hospital beds and how to

provide extra beds in an emergency. That report found the state has

room to accommodate 2,149 patients in regular beds and 374 in

intensive care units. The goal is to find room for up to 30 percent more.

" I believe strongly that New Hampshire is leading the way on pandemic

planning. I'm not going to say that I'm satisfied with our efforts. We

do have gaps that we need to fill, " said Health Commissioner .

The state already has tested its ability to deliver flu vaccine to

large numbers of people when it ran a large-scale drill in three parts

of the state last November. And a drill this fall used 50 volunteers

at the field house at Dartmouth College to test the Hanover

community's ability to turn that space into a makeshift hospital.

A strike force of medical providers from all over the state came

together for the event and two new software systems were tested,

including a new Internet-based program creating an electronic medical

record for patients who might be forced to move around in a disaster.

" You can only plan so much on paper, " said Dr. Gougelet, who

directs the Northern New England Metropolitan Medical Response System,

a bioterrorism and pandemic planning agency involving Maine, New

Hampshire and Vermont.

New Hampshire has divided the task of pandemic planning into 19

regions, each with at least one hospital. Hospital officials, public

health leaders, social service providers, emergency medical providers,

law enforcement and homeland security representatives are meeting

regularly to talk about the specific needs of their communities.

They're identifying the buildings that could take patients if the

hospitals run out of room and arranging ways to get additional beds,

supplies and staff. They're looking at sites to securely store

vaccines and ways to ensure everyone involved can communicate. They're

identifying people like the homebound and homeless in their

communities who may need special attention in a disaster.

Gougelet said the regions all are at different points in the process

but after studying what went wrong following Hurricane Katrina on the

Gulf Coast, he's convinced that localizing the planning will be key to

a successful response in New Hampshire whatever the threat.

" You're not waiting for the state. You're not waiting for the feds.

They can still go into action without anyone's permission, " he said.

Several steps remain in the pandemic planning, including getting the

state Legislature to appropriate $6 million for special vaccines being

made available by the federal government, getting each region to

complete and run a drill on its plan and making sure officials have

the legal authority to ration medicine, commandeer buildings or take

other steps that may be necessary in a health emergency. Gougelet said

it's also unclear whether existing plans make adequate provisions for

an extended emergency.

And what will Meals on Wheels do if its volunteers are laid low by the

flu? The agency keeps a supply of frozen meals to deliver extras if

bad weather or a shortage of delivery people makes daily delivery

impossible. It also has a collection of meals that don't require

refrigeration in case of a prolonged power outage.

" We see ourselves as having to keep going no matter what. So many

people depend on us, " said Executive Director Debra Perou-Hermans.

And at Angie's Shelter and New Horizons, officials said shelters have

a broad base of volunteers to provide extra hands in an emergency,

especially since New Horizons also houses the local health clinic.

" A lot of what is done is done by volunteers, " said Tim Soucy who's

vice president of the board and a Manchester public health administrator.

" It could be the saving grace. I'm sure people would still say:

what needs to be done? I think we're very fortunate, " he said.

http://www.eagletribune.com/nhnews/local_story_352065535?keyword=topstory