OFFICIALS FEAR STATE UNPREPARED FOR BIRD FLU VIRUS WIDESPREAD INFECTION WOULD STRAIN HEALTH CARE.Byline: TROY ANDERSON Staff Writer As health officials announced Friday the first evidence of Avian influenza avian influenza: see influenza. spreading from person to person, Southland experts said they are growing increasingly alarmed that cities and hospitals are drastically unprepared for a possible pandemic pandemic /pan·dem·ic/ (pan-dem´ik) 1. a widespread epidemic of a disease. 2. widely epidemic. pan·dem·ic adj. Epidemic over a wide geographic area. n. . Hospital officials, in particular, are concerned that federal preparation is not adequate as birds carrying the virus come closer to the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , said James Lott, executive vice president of the Hospital Association of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . ``We have an opportunity here in California to have hundreds of thousands of people infected by the bird flu bird flu: see influenza. bird flu or avian influenza viral respiratory disease, mainly of birds including poultry and waterbirds but also transmissible to humans. when it does arrive and insufficient funding and planning has been done to prepare California to deal with this level of a catastrophe,'' Lott said. ``The fact the governor is stepping up to the plate with a proposal to add $400 million to the budget to prepare California is testament to the fact that the federal government's response has been inadequate.'' Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled the plan Friday, proposing the extra funds to help the state's health system prepare for disasters by purchasing mobile field hospitals, antiviral drugs Antiviral Drugs Definition Antiviral drugs are medicines that cure or control virus infections. Purpose Antivirals are used to treat infections caused by viruses. , ventilators, protective equipment and other supplies. Lott said the funds will help, but the federal government needs to provide far more. In January, U.S. Health and Human Services Noun 1. Health and Human Services - the United States federal department that administers all federal programs dealing with health and welfare; created in 1979 Department of Health and Human Services, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt came to Los Angeles and said the federal government would provide $100 million for pandemic flu preparations, including $6.7 million for California and an additional $2.9 million for the county. But Lott said Friday, ``We've seen very little of that funding. We've seen very little come to the front lines.'' Carol Meyer, director of the county's Emergency Medical Services An Emergency medical service (abbreviated to initialism "EMS" in many countries) is a service providing out-of-hospital acute care and transport to definitive care, to patients with illnesses and injuries which the patient believes constitutes a medical emergency. Agency, said none of that money is going to private hospitals, which make up the vast majority of area facilities. Adm. John Agwunobi, assistant secretary of health for HHS HHS Department of Health and Human Services. , said an additional $250 million will be provided to the states in the next few months. Earlier this week, Leavitt announced that Congress had approved the president's 2006-07 emergency funding request of $2.3 billion to prepare for a pandemic. An undetermined amount of those funds will go to states and counties. Agwunobi said that's on top of more than $6 billion in bioterrorism funds the federal government has provided to states and counties since 2001 to increase hospital surge capacity and enhance public health. ``The funding is ongoing for health infrastructure and hospital surge capacity,'' Agwunobi said. ``I want to stress, however, that pandemic influenza preparedness is not only the responsibility of the federal government.'' Currently, Lott said, hospitals in the state have 35,000 ventilators but estimate they would need 350,000 to effectively deal with a pandemic. ``We could have more people hospitalized than we've ever had before,'' Lott said. ``Each of the mobile hospitals have 400 beds apiece, so we'll have surge capacity. ``But we've got hundreds of thousands of people in nursing homes who are going to be highly at risk, children and other people with compromised immune systems.'' County Public Health Officer Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding said that, in the event of a pandemic, staffing would be the biggest challenge. ``We already have a nursing shortage,'' Fielding said. ``So if a substantial portion of the work force was ill or had to take care of loved ones who were ill, I think we're going to have significant stress in terms of being able to staff the existing hospitals, let alone surge capacity.'' So far the virus has killed tens of thousands of birds and 130 people in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. But experts are concerned that it could mutate mu·tate intr. & tr.v. mu·tat·ed, mu·tat·ing, mu·tates To undergo or cause to undergo mutation. [Latin m into a form easily transmissible transmissible /trans·mis·si·ble/ (trans-mis´i-b'l) capable of being transmitted. trans·mis·si·ble adj. Capable of being conveyed from one person to another. among people. On Friday, World Health Organization officials said they had the first evidence that the bird flu virus had mutated and spread from person to person within a family in Indonesia. Health experts said the spread was limited to the family and that the genetic change does not increase the threat of a worldwide pandemic. |
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