| Health Officials Get Prepared | | Print | |
| Sunday, 20 September 2009 18:52 | |||
 Ministry of Health and Human Services is collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) held a four-day Pandemic Influenza Workshop across the TCI. Beginning Monday, September 14th - at the Gustarvus Lightbourne Sports Complex in Providenciales and to concluding in Grand Turk on Thursday, September 17th, the workshops were facilitated by Dr. Barbara Carby and Dr. Damian Henry, both Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) Consultants, who saw stakeholders on every island from multiple sectors and disciplines.
Day one of the consultative process covered the National Disaster Plan, the Health Sector Disaster Management Plan, and the National Influenza Pandemic Plan. The main focus of the workshops was the Influenza H1N1 pandemic and the effort to develop a national program to strengthen the TCI’s capacity to effectively and efficiently respond to any such occurrence. An influenza pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads on a worldwide scale and infects a large proportion of the human population. In contrast to the regular seasonal epidemics of influenza, these pandemics occur irregularly. Influenza pandemics occur when a new strain of the influenza virus is transmitted to humans from another animal species. Species that are thought to be important in the emergence of new human strains are pigs, chickens and ducks. These novel strains are unaffected by any immunity people may have to older strains of human influenza and can therefore spread extremely rapidly and infect very large numbers of people. On June 11, 2009, the ongoing outbreak of Influenza A/H1N1, commonly referred to as "swine flu", was officially declared by World Health Organization (WHO) to be the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century of a new strain of Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 identified in April 2009. It is thought to be a mutation of four known strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1: one endemic in humans, one endemic in birds, and two endemic in pigs (swine). An August 13 update by the World Health Organization (WHO) states that "74 countries have officially reported over 182,166 cases of influenza (H1N1) infection, including 1799 deaths. Director for Health Services, Dr. Rufus Ewing said, “The TCI has a Pandemic Influenza plan, but given the swine flu experience, we sees it necessary to revisit our plan and revise the plan, and multiple components and stakeholders, to get their input in the plan in also preparing Standard Operating Procedures as part of that plan. Also with this workshop we will plan a stimulation exercise for sometime in October where we will test the plan.” To date, a total of thirty-five (35) confirmed cases have been recorded in TCI, eighteen (18) from Grand Turk, sixteen (16) from Providenciales, and one (1) from South Caicos.
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