# 4599
Despite years of planning and preparing for a much worse pandemic (which may yet come), hospitals – particularly ICUs – in many regions around the world found themselves severely tested during the peak of the 2009 pandemic.
The vast majority of people who contracted this virus recovered without incident, but for something less than 1% of those infected, swine flu proved far more serious.
Today, a detailed overview of how ICU’s in Australia coped with the influx of patients last year – and hopefully, some lessons learned – from ABC (Australia) News.
Swine flu put hospitals 'on edge' last year › News in Science (ABC Science)
Thursday, 27 May 2010 Helen Carter
ABC
Australia's intensive care system was on the verge of collapse for the first time ever during last year's swine flu epidemic, according to one intensive care physician.
Associate Professor Steve Webb from the Royal Perth Hospital hopes lessons learnt in 2009, together with vaccination, and the fact many now have some immunity to swine flu, will help prevent a repeat scenario this year.
Webb will tell the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases annual scientific conference in Darwin this week that early diagnosis and treatment with antivirals is vital, as is expanding the ICU system, to cope with admissions.
Webb and colleagues recently investigated influenza H1N1 (swine flu) admissions to all 187 intensive care units (ICUs) in Australia and New Zealand in 2009.
"ICUs were on the point of collapse which was unprecedented. The ICU system in every region in Australia came close to collapse and we've learnt a great deal from that and will be better prepared to manage ICU surge capacity this year," says Webb.
"One Sydney doctor said that in one week during last year's flu season, his intensive care unit saw more people with severe acute respiratory distress than in any other week of his 30 year career in intensive care...There was a massive wave of very sick people."
The sobering lesson here, of course, is that we remain woefully unprepared to deal with a truly severe pandemic.
A repeat of 1918 could be 100 times worse than what we saw in 2009. While that may never happen, history suggests that we shouldn’t take that for granted.
Obviously, no health care system can prepared adequately for a `worst-case’ pandemic.
But when a `mild-to-moderate’ pandemic tests our health care capacity the way H1N1 did, it demonstrates just how vulnerable we are to even a moderately severe public health crisis.
