First, I’ve joined the Twitter community. I’ll have the link on this site by the time you see this. Please sign up to follow my Tweets.

Second, There is a lot of concern about the Bird Flu situation in Egypt, with the discovery of two more cases recently. That’s a total of 15 cases since the start of the year, making Egypt the worst location for H5N1 so far in 2009. It does appear that the virus has shifted in Egypt, which is a good thing because it is less deadly than it was previously. Of the 15 people that have come down with H5N1 this year in Egypt, NONE of them have died. There is some concern that it is more easily transferable from person to person, but if the mortality rate has gone down to zero, that is a significant and noteworthy development. WHO is sending a team to Egypt to study these latest cases, but they were delayed due to the holidays in Egypt. They should be there by now. Let’s see how long it takes them to report their findings.

Stay tuned…

Harlan

Recently, the results of an analysis of State pandemic preparedness were released with very mixed results.  It was prepared for the Homeland Security Counsel in January 2009.  Below is a link to the full report.

http://pandemicflu.gov/plan/states/state_assessment.html

There are 27 Objectives broken down into three Strategic Goals that the Health and Human Services Department have identified.  States were then evaluated based upon their answers to questionnaires on how far they’ve gotten in each area over the last two years.

The three goals identified were:  A) Ensure Continuity of Operations of State Agencies & Continuity of State Government (with 6 objectives); B) Protect Citizens (14 objectives); and C) Sustain/Support 17 Critical Infrastructure Sectors and Key Resources (7 objectives).

The conlusion states in part:

The findings summarized above indicate that, in the aggregate, the States have made important progress toward preparing for their unique roles in combating an influenza pandemic but have much more to do. Most States have major gaps with respect to most of the 27 Operating Objectives.

This is troubling, given the fact that preparations have been going on since early 2006, and after three years of planning, we still have “major gaps” in our planning within each State of the union.  For example, Missouri has five areas where they have been graded as “Inadequate Preparedness”, and four of those occured within the strategic goal of Protecting Citizens.   They had two other objectives rated as Many Major Gaps (also in the area of Protecting Citizens) and eleven other objectives with a Few Major Gaps.  In only six of the 27 objectives was Missouri rated as No Major Gaps.

A quick review of Table 3 of the report, which identified the status of each State on each of the 27 objectives, indicates that Arizona was among the best prepared, with No Major Gaps in 19 of the 27 areas, and no area received a mark of Inadequate Preparedness.    On the other hand, Hawaii was one of the worst prepared states, with 21 marks of Inadequate Preparedness.

This is certainly an issue that bears closer scrutiny.  You should look up where your state lies on all these preparedness issues, and see if you can convince them to move faster to close all the gaps in planning that currently exist.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin
Dolgin Consulting, LLC

Its a little premature to be too alarmed, but I just saw a news report from January 23 that said that Canada may have had its first outbreak of H5N1 on a Turkey farm in British Columbia.  See the link below for more details.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/jan2309avian-jw.html

IF it turns out to be true, and at this point it’s just suspected, then it may be a major turning point.  This will be the first case of high pathegin H5N1 in North America.  There was a case of low pathegin H5N1 in Virginia a few years ago, but low pathegin H5N1 is not dangerous to people.  High pathegin is the kind that is in the news, that can be deadly to people.

If it is confirmed to be high pathegin H5N1, then it may be just a matter of time before it makes its way into the U.S.  Experts have long thought that the migratory pattern of wild birds would bring H5N1 to the U.S. sooner or later, and the government checks many thousands of migratory birds every year to see if they have H5N1.  So far, they haven’t found any, but that may soon change. 

This is a wake up call that everyone needs to begin preparing for a pandemic.  At the least, people should start gathering extra food, water and medicine, learn and begin using proper hygiene, and consider how a pandemic might affect your family -  Will your job be affected?  Can you work from home?  What if schools close?  I’ll discuss all of this in a future blog, or feel free to e-mail me your questions at hdolgin@dolginconsulting.com to learn more.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin
Dolgin Consulting

Preparing for a pandemic is an essential part of any company’s Business Continuity Program.  The experts agree that a pandemic is coming, and most business continuity plans (unless you have an advanced plan) do not address the unavailability of people – usually a BC plan involves the movement of people from one location to another location.

First, you need to develop a list of planning assumptions.  Most experts will tell you to plan for 30-40% absenteeism during the height of the pandemic.  They also say there is likely to be 3 waves of a pandemic.  These should become part of your assumptions.

Second, you should develop a list of activites you will undertake leading up to a pandemic (actions to take right now) and activities to perform when the pandemic comes.  There are guides that will assist you in planning at the following locations:

PandemicPrep.Org Resource Guide

PandemicFlu.Gov Planning Guide

Missouri DHSS Ready in 3 Planning Guides

Next, once you’ve developed a plan, it is important that you communicate the plan to your employees, so that they know what to expect from your company during a pandemic.  You should also be prepared to communicate to all stakeholders about your plans.  This would include customers, vendors, shareholders, board members, and employees.

Also, your employees should be educated so that they can begin to prepare their families at home for a pandemic.  They should consider now what would happen if the schools and day cares would close, have they begun to gather two weeks food (p.7 of PandemicFlu.Gov/Planning Guide) and 3 days of water supplies – the link above recommends two weeks for both food and water, but storing two weeks of water at 1 gallon of water per person per day is unrealistic - that would be 64 gallons of water for a family of 4).

Obviously, We can’t cover everything you should do during a pandemic, but I hope I’ve given you some guidance and identified some helpful resources that you can review to begin preparing.  The main thing is to start preparing if you haven’t done so already.

If you are researching how to plan, but you don’t want to build the plan yourself, feel free to e-mail me at hdolgin@dolginconsulting.com or visit our website at Dolgin Consulting to see what it would cost to have us build your plan for you.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin, CBCP
Independent Consultant
Dolgin Consulting