$1.3M to help state gird for pandemic Federal funds will help planning efforts

With an additional $1.3 million in federal dollars awarded this week, the Maine Center for Disease Control is flush with ideas to tighten up pandemic flu planning in the state.

According to MCDC director Dr. Dora Anne Mills, the state has used an initial allotment of $818,000 to begin developing a statewide pandemic flu plan as well as to support similar planning efforts in each of Maine’s 16 counties and at every hospital in the state. While these efforts are at various stages of completion, she said Thursday, much more remains to be done before flu planners can get a good night’s sleep.

“We need to conduct exercises and drills at all levels of the system,” she said. “Based on those exercises, we’ll identify the gaps and the plans will be revised and reviewed again.”

The federal government has ordered states to submit preliminary drafts of their pandemic flu preparedness plans by early fall, though those plans will be added to and revised on an ongoing basis. Mills said Maine’s developing plan is in good shape but in need of fine-tuning. For example, in the event of a pandemic, the governor must have the authority to override specified state laws and regulations, such as those that limit how many patients may be admitted to hospitals.

“We need to identify what should be included in those executive orders so they’ll be ready to go when we need them,” Mills said.

Progress in county-level planning is “all over the map,” Mills said. “Some counties are diving right in and doing a tremendous job,” she said, while others are moving more slowly despite technical assistance and some funding from the state. Poorer and less populated counties are likely to lag behind more affluent counties, she said.

At the Northeastern Maine Regional Resource Center in Brewer, which supports hospital and county-level planning efforts in the northern third of the state, director Kathy Knight said additional funds can’t come too soon. Bringing people together for even basic exercises costs money, she said, and a full-scale disaster drill can tie up space, personnel and supplies for several days.

“But exercising the plan is critical,” Knight said Wednesday. “It’s essential that we know if we have a good plan, that people know what they’re supposed to do, that the communications work and the supplies we need are available.”

In addition to helping to pay for pandemic drills, she said, the new federal money will be used for education and training and to purchase “just in case” supplies of everything from paper masks to antibiotics to ventilators.

International public health experts have warned for several years about the likelihood of a global outbreak of deadly influenza, and concern is growing over a strain of flu currently circulating in wild and domestic birds. No infected birds have been identified yet in North America, but scientists expect the virus will arrive this year in migratory birds.

More than 200 cases of this bird flu have been reported in humans in Asia and the Middle East, but to date there’s little evidence of human-to-human transmission. Experts fear that the virus will mutate into a readily transmissible human disease that will spread across the globe, potentially causing millions of deaths. They predict health care systems will be overwhelmed and that many businesses and services will be affected.

In February of this year, the federal Department of Health and Human Services distributed $100 million to states for initial planning efforts, of which Maine received $818,000. The second phase of federal funding announced this week amounted to $225 million, of which Maine’s portion is $1,362,485.

More information is available online at www.pandemicflu.gov and www.maineflu.gov.