Is your business pandemic-ready?

It's too late to begin planning for a flu pandemic when the first employee goes down sick or the World Health Organization declares an emergency, says a leading workplace hazards expert. "This does take time, so now is the time to start planning," says Joan Burton, the Industrial Accident Prevention Association's health strategy manager. Should a pandemic influenza outbreak occur, businesses will play a vital role in protecting the health of their employees as well as limiting their exposure to the community and protecting the economy. Certain organizations like Ontario Power Generation that handle critical infrastructure service such as power, telecommunications and health care-related institutions have a legislated responsibility to continue operating in a crisis with an emergency plan.

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While health care experts have little idea when a pandemic flu will strike North America, how bad it will be, or what form it will take, many say the H5N1 bird flu looks like a likely candidate.

Unlike SARS in 2003, ordinary businesses weren't affected that much since the disease was contained in Toronto hospitals. But Burton says flu strains are everywhere.

One topic she lectures on is the misunderstandings about how the flu spreads.

Of the five ways any infectious disease can spread, the flu has only two of them, by direct and indirect contact, through eyes, nose and mouth, and by droplet. But it's not airborne.

A flu-sufferer who's coughing or sneezing creates large droplets that fall to the ground. Burton says that won't effect someone on the far side of a room.

With airborne diseases like tuberculosis, measles or mumps, the droplets are tiny particles, less than five microns in size, that can float in the air for hours.

"A sick person can be coughing and sneezing, leave the room, and someone else catches the virus ten minutes later still floating around," says Burton. But that doesn't happen with the flu.

The flu virus can live up to 24 to 48 hours on hard surfaces like counter tops and doorknobs.

What businesses can do to protect themselves is pay attention to "environmental cleaning" to cover the droplet spread and keep respectable social distances, says Burton.

People sharing workstations and phones are important areas that require attention.

After SARS, Burton found some companies bought large volumes of anti-bacterial soap, but ordinary soap and water works still works best. Hand sanitizers are a good idea when you can't wash your hands.

Burton says how well a business can keep functioning during a health emergency will depend upon prior planning.

Companies need to know their essential services and prioritize what functions must be maintained and what can be postponed for a few weeks. "Each ware of pandemic is likely to last up to eight weeks," says Burton, and the avian flu will likely come in two or three waves.

"It will take time, but the key thing to do is examine vulnerable positions and imagine if a large percentage of your staff are off sick, which of your critical functions is going to be in trouble.

"If you only have one or two people to do payroll and they both get sick at the same time, you could be in major trouble." Cross-training is important and it's especially critical to consult with unions in cases where job classifications may require shifting staff to different positions.

Burton suggests companies should consider scheduling more teleconferences rather than face-to-face meetings.

Businesses should also investigate the options of employees working at home and consider improving sick time policy to cover eight weeks of a flu wave to leave no financial penalty for people staying at home when they're sick.

"You don't want people coming into work sick because they can't afford to stay home." says Burton. "That will decimate your workforce worse than anything."

Associate Medical Officer of Health for the Sudbury and District Health Unit, Vera Etches says pandemic planning can pay huge dividends for businesses and their suppliers down the road.

"Business needs to have some way of adjusting to any type of emergency that comes along," says Etches. "A lot of the thinking that goes into it will be useful for other types of emergencies.

"It's not an expensive process to create a list of essential services and think about what staff needs cross-training," says Etches, who sits on the City of Greater Sudbury's emergency planning group. The Sudbury health unit can provide a pandemic preparedness checklist for small business offered by the Retail Council of Canada.

But Etches suggests one way to prepare is stocking up on hand sanitizers.

The health unit is formulating a business awareness campaign this winter beginning with a pandemic planning exercise in early December where they'll improvise scenarios for organizations and companies to work through their pandemic plans.

Sadly, despite all the dire predictions, the IAPA's Burton says the message isn't sinking in with many businesses. She was scheduled to speak at a pandemic planning seminar in Sault Ste. Marie on Sept. 18 but wasn't sure if the event would go ahead because registrations were so low.

She says a particular cause for concern if the avian flu mutates to affected humans and goes global is that it may prove fatal to a larger population demographic.

"If that strain becomes a pandemic strain, it could be average healthy people in the workforce that could actually die from it."

The 1918-19 Spanish flu killed millions in the 20 to 40-age bracket. "The thing about a pandemic stream is that nobody has any immunity to it."

www.sdhu.com

www.iapa.ca

www.retailcouncil.org/pandemic

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business