Draft should be complete by June, Wildgen says
KU has joined other universities across the nation in the effort of creating its own pandemic influenza response guide. The document, which provides a framework for decision-making in the event of a worldwide pandemic outbreak, should be complete by this June, Incident Manager Mike Wildgen said.
A task force headed by Wildgen and Student Health Services Administrator Carol Seager has been working on the draft of the plan since last March. The task force includes representatives from various response units, including the Athletics
department, Provost’s Office, Dining Services, Housing and International Programs.
“We don’t know when the next pandemic will occur,” Seager said in a presentation of the response guide last Wednesday. “We must embrace that this isn’t a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’”
According to Pandemicflu.gov, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, pandemic influenza is a global disease outbreak that occurs when a new influenza A virus emerges for which there is little or no natural immunity. The new, contagious virus develops after undergoing a process known as antigenic shift.
“These changes occur when proteins on the surface of the virus combine in new ways as a result of mutation or exchange of genetic material between multiple influenza viruses,” the website says.
The influenza then spreads quickly from person to person, causing severe sickness and deaths worldwide.
On the Pandemicflu.gov site, Dr. John Agwunobi, Assistant Secretary for Health in the US Department of Health and Human Services, said that it is nearly impossible to predict when a virus will mutate to become a pandemic virus.
The most current threat is avian flu, known as H5N1, which is a virus that has been transferred from bird to human but has not yet been documented to spread from human to human. To date, there have been 277 cases of avian flu worldwide, resulting in 167 deaths. No cases of avian flu have reached North or South America, however, and no cases have been reported to pass from human to human.
“A reality is that H5N1 could mutate tomorrow and become a pandemic virus, or it might never mutate and become a pandemic virus,” Agwonobi said on the website. “It's important that, we as a community, as a society, that we stay prepared.”
In the past century, there have been three worldwide pandemic outbreaks. US Army records indicate that the first outbreak of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 most likely occurred in Kansas.
Professor John Mielke, chair of the anthropology department, is a member of the speaker’s bureau and speaks about the history and evolution of human sickness. He said the Spanish flu most likely originated in China, but the first cluster of flu cases in the US began with a group of soldiers stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas. The virus spread quickly and lasted five weeks, eventually killing nearly 500,000 people in the United States.
Worldwide, Spanish flu is estimated to have affected nearly one-third of the world’s population (600 million people) and killed nearly 50 million, with the highest affected group being young adults, according to the Center for Disease Control.
The Asian flu of 1957 and Hong Kong Flu of 1968 both developed in China and were combinations of viruses that contained genes from an avian influenza virus and human influenza virus. The Asian flu caused 70,000 deaths worldwide, while the Hong Kong flu caused 34,000. The most affected groups of these pandemics were the elderly and small children.
During pandemic influenza outbreaks, medical systems often become overloaded and vaccination shortages become especially problematic, says the pandemic flu information of Douglas County’s official website. Local governments are charged with developing plans to control the outbreaks with limited funding and medical equipment.
When medical equipment is scarce, Seager said, an important method of keeping pandemic spread to a minimum is social distancing, which reduces the social contact of uninfected individuals. KU used this method in the Spanish flu of 1918 to keep healthy individuals from contracting the virus and spreading it. The university closed down for one month and students were forbidden to leave Lawrence.
Citing evidence that the Hong Kong flu was brought to the United States from human to human contact in Hong Kong, Seager said increased international travel at KU creates new threats.
In the 2006 Open Doors report, KU was as ranked as the eighth public university in the nation in the percentage of students who study abroad in the 2006. In 2005, nearly 1200 students studied abroad, and the report estimates more than a fourth of KU students will do so by the time they graduate.
“Influenza is highly communicable and world-wide travel at the rate seen today can't help but increase the possibility that such diseases can spread on a world-wide scale,” said biology professor Bill Picking.
In addition to providing $1.1 million to Kansas in 2006 for phase I of pandemic funding, the federal government has called upon state and county governments across the country to identify and “public and private sector partners” for effective planning and response. Counties are responsible for drawing up their own emergency preparedness plans.
If a pandemic should strike, the University will become one of Douglas County’s three official vaccination distribution sites. In the likely event of a vaccine shortage, the CDC must make priority lists for distribution of the limited injections.
“I say those words and my hair stands up on my arms,” Seager said. “I can’t imagine telling another human being that we couldn’t help them.”
KU will be among the first universities in the nation to have developed a pandemic response guide. Vanderbilt and North Carolina have also developed extensive response plans.
In order to prepare for pandemic spread, KU will follow the seven pandemic stages set by the World Health Organization. In each stage of the pandemic, the plan defines response outcomes and each department must create its own plan to carry out its duty throughout these stages. These response outcomes are healthcare delivery, infection control, learning continuity, operational communications, public information and vaccination distribution.
Once the draft of the plan is complete, Wildgen said his task force would create news releases and hold instructional sessions on campus to generate awareness of the plan.
“We want to get ahead of the crisis so that we’re as prepared as possible,” Wildgen said. “The organizational effort is the most difficult.”