COMMUNICATIONS

Pandemic Planning – Get To Know Your Neighbour

A key step people can take to prepare for an influenza pandemic is to get to know their neighbours and talk about how they would work together if it occurred.

Canterbury District Health Board Chief Medical Officer Dr Nigel Millar said, people should be forging relationships with their neighbours now before a pandemic happened.

He said people only had to look at the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 to see that the communities who worked together had emerged from the pandemic the most unscathed.

"The lessons are all in history. Form a relationship with your neighbours and talk about how you will cope. What happened in 1918 was people worked together and helped each other out. It is simple things such as putting together a phone number contact list," he said.

Dr Paul McCormack, GP and Managing Director of Pegasus Health, said during a pandemic it was likely the “battle field” would be in the community. “Hospitals will be unable to cope with the large number of ill people. It will not be enough to mobilise the health system. The whole community will need to mobilise to help each other so that the relatively scarce health workers can put their effort where it will make the most impact.”

He said during a pandemic, general practice, pharmacy and community services would work in a different way. “We expect to create “green” stream primary health care services where unwell people with non flu related illness will continue to receive care. A new “red” stream based on community-based assessment centres will assess people for the flu, provide treatment if appropriate and ensure support from other community agencies.”

Patrick Creasey, Neighbourhood Support Christchurch Co-ordinator, said there were now more than 1900 neighbourhood groups across Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula. In the past year alone, the organisation had overseen the formation of 170 new groups.

Mr Creasey said the increase in the number of neighbourhood groups was partly in response to a realisation among the public that an influenza pandemic could occur.

Over the next few months, the CDHB will work with Neighbourhood Support to ensure the latter’s database includes the up-to-date details for every group’s “contact person” and their deputies. If a pandemic occurs, it could be up to these people to mobilise their members to help out in the community.

‘We don’t want people to be paranoid about a pandemic. But it’s like an insurance policy, you should have all this in place before it hits,” he said.

Dr Geoffrey Rice, Associate Professor of History at the University of Canterbury, said the major conclusion he had come to during his research for his book, Black November – The 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New Zealand, was that communities who organised themselves early had the lowest death rates.

He said although our society was more transient than it was in 1918, if a serious flu pandemic developed again, sick people, especially those who lived alone, could have their lives saved by their neighbours.

“You can’t be responsible for everybody in your street but you can get to know your neighbours on either side and the three opposite,” he said.

A form of avian influenza or bird flu, otherwise known as H5N1, has affected poultry flocks and other birds in several countries since 2003. So far, more than 270 people have also caught the infection, as a result of close contact with infected birds.

Although there is no firm evidence that H5N1 can pass easily from person to person, there are concerns the virus could develop the ability to do this, or that it might mix with human flu viruses to create a new virus.

A pandemic plan with family, friends or neighbours could include:

Who could help with food and supplies if you and your household are sick
Who could help with renewing prescription medicines before they run out
The telephone numbers of people who live near you and your doctor’s telephone number.
Also talk to them about putting together an emergency supplies kit, which should include a supply of food and drinks to last for a week, Paracetamol or ibuprofen, masks which can be worn by sick people to stop the spread of germs, tissues and plastic bags for used tissues, activities (such as books, games and books) for people who have to stay at home.

At a national level, there has been extensive pandemic planning underway for the past 18 months, culminating in the New Zealand Influenza Action Plan, which was released last September.

The CDHB, along with the country’s 20 other DHBs and the Ministry of Health, will take part in an extensive pandemic exercise in May. Exercise Cruickshank will focus on the four pandemic stages; “Keep it Out”, “Stamp it Out”, “Manage it” and “Recover from it”.

ENDS