An estimated 36,000 people in the United States die each year from complications related to seasonal flu.
An influenza pandemic, however, would have much graver consequences, officials say, overwhelming health services, disrupting commerce and killing millions of people around the world.
According to the World Health Organization, a pandemic can start when three conditions have been met:
- the emergence of a disease new to the population
- the virus infects humans, causing serious illness
- the virus spreads easily and must be capable of sustained person-to-person transmission
Avian flu is being watched as the next potential pandemic because, with the exception of the virus being transmissible from human to human, it already has met two of the three criteria for a pandemic.
Michael Osterholm, head of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, says it is not a matter of “if” avian flu will happen, rather “it is when, and where, and how bad.”
Because the timing and severity of the next pandemic cannot be predicted, governments and health professionals worldwide are studying past pandemics to learn from, and better prepare for, the next one.
In the past 100 years, three influenza pandemics have occurred among humans. The most recent was in 1957-58 (Asian flu) and 1968-69 (Hong Kong flu), killing tens of thousands of Americans each time. The 1918-19 pandemic (Spanish flu) was especially severe, killing at least 40 million people. In the United States, the mortality rate of people infected with the virus during that pandemic was around 2.5 percent.
If a severe pandemic struck today, such as the one in 1918, there would be large numbers of people requiring or seeking health care services, a shortage of intensive care respirators, high rates of worker absenteeism and probable cancellation of school and other public events. Utilities, retail and financial services, as well as other public activities, also could be disrupted.
It also is likely that many age groups would be affected. In the 1957 and 1968 influenza pandemics, infants and the elderly were most likely to succumb to the disease. The 1918 pandemic, however, attacked primarily the young, healthy population, with the majority of deaths — 99 percent — occurring in those under 65 years of age. The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe of the three pandemics, killing more than 50 million people worldwide, including more than 500,000 deaths in the United States alone.
For the first time, state and local governments are proactively planning for a future pandemic. At UNMC and The Nebraska Medical Center, officials have been developing a business continuity plan that addresses a wide range of issues from identifying staff for critical functions to exploring telecommuting possibilities to assessing delivery of patient care when services are overwhelmed.
Watch UNMC Today for continued avian flu information, or visit the medical center’s Web site at www.unmc.edu/avianflu.
Sources include www.pandemicflu.gov, the official U.S. Government Web site on this topic, and Nebraska Health and Human Services System.