Recognizing the importance of the role of health leaders in planning for a potential influenza pandemic, the Canadian College of Health Service Executives established a National Advisory Committee to guide the development of a position paper which identifies the key issues and associated recommendations related to planning from a health leader’s perspective. [...] Health leaders will want to address the following issues during a pandemic: • the deployment of staff and the use of people from other institutions or jurisdictions; • health care provider health and safety; • the storage, distribution and security of supplies; • societal disruption; • the ethics of access to health care services and mandatory report to work policies; • organizational risk managem [...] By severe estimates, the virus will attack 30% of Canadians, and kill those primarily in the 20- 50 year range.3 This cohort represents the majority of health care providers and therefore many aspects of the health system and public infrastructure will be challenged directly and indirectly. [...] Additionally, Health Canada and PHAC play a significant role in encouraging manufacturers to develop contractual provisions to obtain appropriate quantities of specified seed virus identified by the WHO for the purpose of manufacturing domestic or off-shore vaccine supplies and providing the legislative base for the manufacture and sale of vaccines and anti- virals. [...] Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, suggests that planners need to factor in the impact of the just-in- time economy.4 That is, planning needs to consider the echo effect of stockpiling vaccines and anti-virals; eventually, manufacturers will not be able to keep pace with the demand.
- Pages
- 22
- Published in
- Canada
