AUGUSTA – Planning in Maine for a long-predicted influenza pandemic has reached well beyond the public health sector, if attendance at a state-sponsored summit in Augusta on Wednesday is any indicator.

More than 1,100 Mainers from all across the state and representing a broad range of professional backgrounds attended the daylong event at the Augusta Civic Center, filling the central auditorium to capacity and crowding the facility’s many breakout meeting rooms.

Keynote speaker Dr. Richard Scheiber of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta praised the state’s planning process to date. Noting the diverse interests represented at the conference, he said he was “delighted to see what Maine is doing at the grass-roots level,” and he called Maine CDC Director Dr. Dora Anne Mills “a hero” for the work that has been accomplished.

“This is the largest state summit I’ve heard of, at least in terms of attendance,” said Mills during a brief break in the day’s packed schedule. She recalled that the state’s last pandemic planning conference, held in December of 2005, drew only 300 participants, almost exclusively from public health and emergency response offices. While these groups made up a good portion of the attendance at Wednesday’s event, participants also came from public and private schools and colleges, municipal offices, group homes, electric and water utilities, public service agencies, agricultural groups, research labs, financial institutions, churches, private businesses and all manner of medical practices.

Mills said the turnout indicated broad engagement in an issue that public health officials have warned about for years: the devastating social consequences of a worldwide influenza epidemic as virulent as the Spanish flu of 1918-1919. That epidemic sickened at least 47,000 Mainers and killed 5,000. In the United States, the flu caused some 675,000 deaths and crippled businesses, governments and social services. Worldwide, it is estimated to have killed between 50 million and 100 million people, almost half of them young adults between the ages of 20 and 40.

While medicine has grown more sophisticated in the intervening years, health officials warn that the two most deadly effects of the 1918 flu virus – an acute respiratory condition sometimes referred to as “shock lung” and a dysfunctional clotting mechanism that leads to uncontrollable internal bleeding – would still pose a significant challenge to modern-day practitioners. And the sheer number of sick people, they say, would overwhelm hospitals, clinics and whole health care systems, forcing many victims to be cared for at home by family members while professional providers ration life-saving procedures and medications among the very sickest.

A strain of influenza that is genetically similar to the strain that caused the Spanish flu is currently circulating in wild birds and domestic poultry flocks in many countries, primarily in Asia. About 240 cases have been reported in humans who have been in close contact with infected birds, and in nearly half of these cases, the victim has died. Health officials fear the virus will mutate into a form that is easily passed from one human to another and will travel around the globe in a matter of weeks. Once under way, the pandemic could last a year or longer.

Gov. John Baldacci opened Wednesday’s summit, praising planning efforts already under way, stressing the importance of building relationships between groups and identifying the news media as an integral first responder to any emergency.

Mills and Maj. Gen. John W. Libby, head of the Maine National Guard and commissioner of the Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management, read from a well-researched archive of news stories and public records from Maine’s ordeal during the 1918 influenza, underscoring the disruptions in daily life and the many challenges faced by citizens and public officials. The heads of Maine’s departments of health and human services, agriculture, inland fisheries and wildlife, public safety and the Maine Emergency Management Agency discussed their planning to date, and a planning team from Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, the first hospital in the state to develop a comprehensive pandemic plan, offered tips on getting started.

Morning and afternoon breakout sessions offered more in-depth information on 19 topics, including how to meet the needs of Maine’s minority populations, the role of churches and other faith groups, and how businesses can stay operational when as many as 40 percent of all employees are unable to work.

Despite the serious content of the day’s presentations, there were some lighter moments. Several panel discussions provoked laughter, and a graphic lunchtime film on proper etiquette for coughing and sneezing brought comic relief to an otherwise somber agenda. African-Caribbean percussionist Michael Wingfield of Portland opened the event with a lively performance, bringing several audience members onstage to drum, chant and dance with him.

Mills said state-level planning for pandemic influenza will continue, and she encouraged those in attendance Wednesday to work in collaboration with state and local agencies and each other in developing their own plans. The time to build essential relationships, Mills noted, is now, and not after a pandemic is under way.

For more information on planning for pandemic influenza, visit www.maineflu.gov. The Maine-produced coughing and sneezing vide, “Why Don’t We Do It in Our Sleeves,” can be viewed at www.coughsafe.com.