Pandemic Influenza

I spent Wednesday and Thursday of last week in DC at a conference on pandemic flu. To say the least, this was a fascinating but sobering experience. I was there because I have been asked to coordinate a supplemental publication based on the meeting which will be published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases later this year. One of the bonuses of this project was that I could coop the help of several of my friends who are also freelance medical writers, which made it quiite a social event.
The objective of the meeting was to generate recommendations for how state and local authorities could prepare for an influenza pandemic. It may not sound that interesting on the surface but it starts to get rather frightening when you start to realise the impact that a severe pandemic would have on all of us.
There were three pandemics in the 20th century (1918, 1957 and 1968). Of these the 1918 pandemic was the worst resulting in between 50 and 100 million deaths wordwide. To put that in context, approximately 40 million people have died from AIDS in the last 2 decades. The world population has grown by 3 times since 1918, so if the same type of pandemic occurred today, we might expect to see 180-360 million deaths.
What is particularly worrying about pandemic flu is that it can result in high death rates in otherwise healthy people. In contrast, seasonal influenza, which occurs every winter, kills about 1 million people worldwide but many of these are old.
The thing that really struck me was not that a pandemic could kill a lot of people but that it would have a devistating effect on all of us due to the disruption that it would cause. It is likely that every aspect of our society would be impacted by the large numbers of people that fell ill. Hospitals would be overwhelmed, and businesses would either grind to a halt or only operate at a greatly reduced level. The supply lines for industry would be thrown into chaos. Travel would be prohibited. Foods and medical supplies would be limited. We would not be able to rely on others to come to our aid as the the whole world would be similarly affected.
There is some hope! An infrastructure is being implemented to allow for the rapid manufacture of vaccines that would help protect at least some of the population. Antiviral drugs are being stockpiled which might help contain an outbreak or protect essential workers. However, I think that we all need to identify what we need to do to ensure that we are prepared to ride out the worst of it. At a minimum, I will be adding to our earthquake kit to ensure that we have enough food for at least 2 weeks. There is a lot information available if you want to read up on this. I would suggest starting at http://pandemicflu.gov/general/.