Bracing For The Inevitable Influenza Pandemic
December 12, 2007 by mimmson
Filed under Flu Pandemic - Top News Stories
Among health experts, the question is not if but when an influenza pandemic will happen, and officials are assembling a regional plan to handle a future outbreak.
In case all this sounds scary, Berkshire County officials looking back on history say it is smart to plan ahead.
The inevitability factor is based on three worldwide flu outbreaks in the 20th century: the so-called Spanish flu in 1918-19, the Asian flu of 1957-58 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69. Each of the outbreaks accounted for at least tens of thousands of deaths worldwide.
Similar planning efforts are under way across the country: setting up a system to react quickly to an outbreak, ensuring that enough hospital beds are available for those who need them, having enough volunteers ready to help with the sick, and delivering medicine and supplies to the homebound.
Planning efforts here are based on projections that a virus would infect 2 million Massachusetts residents and require the hospitalization of 80,000 over the course of two or three months. In addition, planning will take into account that 30 to 40 percent of the working-age population
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would be ill, creating a massive vacuum in services.
