Community Involvement Key to Fighting Bird Flu Outbreak

The health department in Calvert County, Maryland, is taking a community-based approach to planning for a potential flu pandemic. Are cooperation and involvement the keys to surviving a pandemic?

In an article on the Southern Maryland Newspapers Online website, Erica Mitrano says county officials took place in workshops to create a draft plan. The key element of the plan would be building “resilient communities.”

Mitrano said the committee was also focusing on the avian flu virus, saying it would be the most likely cause of a pandemic outbreak.

 “There is a real expectation [the bird flu] will mutate so that human-to-human transmission becomes more likely,” Daniel Stone, a senior associate with a firm hired by the county to collect the input of citizens who attended the workshop, told Mitrano. “It was considered a remote possibility at one time. That is no longer the case.”

Dr. David Rogers, head of the county health department, told attendees that during a bird flu pandemic, the county could see up to half of its population fall ill, with 5,000 to 10,000 dying within a period of several months.