# 3417
CIDRAP’s (Center For Infectious Disease Research and Policy) Promising Practices website is chock full of important information on dealing with a pandemic, and highlights programs designed to do just that from all over the country.
In the past I’ve highlighted several of their practices, including:
Promising Practices: Neighborhood Emergency Teams
Promising Practices: Psychological First Aid
But these just barely scratch the surface of the 185 practices collected on this site. You could spend days gleaning good information off this site (and probably should).
Tonight CIDRAP brings us a promising practices article on a familiar theme to those who visit flu blogs, and flu forums: the need for personal and community preparedness.
I’ve only printed the opening paragraphs, follow the link to read it in its entirety.
PROMISING PRACTICES FOR PANDEMIC PLANNING
Experts stress need for personal, community preparedness
Ayisha Yahya
Staff Writer
Editor's Note: CIDRAP's Promising Practices: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Tools (www.pandemicpractices.org) online database showcases peer-reviewed practices, including useful tools to help others with their planning. This article is one of a series exploring the development of these practices. We hope that describing the process and context of these practices enhances pandemic planning.
Jun 30, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – If you don't have an emergency preparedness plan for yourself, your family, and even your community, now is a good time to make one. That's the message public health officials are sending as cases of the novel H1N1 influenza virus continue to rise nationally and globally.
"If you don't have a plan, you need one now," said Roger Pollok, special projects manager for Emergency Preparedness at the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District in Texas. "The stakes are a little different now."
The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the current outbreak a pandemic on Jun 11. "We are in the earliest days of the pandemic," said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan that day in a statement to the press. "The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch."
Health experts say there is no way to predict what is still in store, but they have concerns that the coming fall flu season might bring a second wave of illnesses, potentially more severe.
