This thread is for news reports from Canada, Greenland and the Arctic Circle.
Any and all volunteer news searchers are welcome
Canadian Government Orders 5.5 Million Courses of Relenza
MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 10, 2006-- “In May 2006 the Canadian Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Health agreed to step up their efforts to strengthen the public health capacity in preparing for an influenza pandemic.
Biota has now been informed that as a consequence of this initiative, the Canadian Government will increase the overall stockpile of antivirals to 55 million courses, and increase the proportion of zanamivir to 5.5 million courses…”
http://www.pharmalive.com/News/index.cfm?articleid=390522&categoryid=10
MaMa – at 19:07 --- Your thread in now posted in the Forum Index at World Region Lookout Posts
Your thread in now posted
And it sounds like I have a code id by dose!! LOL!!
BB, thanks so much!
‘And it sounds like I have a code id by dose!! LOL!!’
Take 2 glasses BBRWFK and a nice hot bath, that won’t cure it but it will thaw out your nose(at least temporarily:-)
Montreal superbug outbreak under control
MONTREAL - An outbreak of C. difficile that has claimed the lives of 11 patients at a Montreal area hospital is under control, with no new infections reported in the past two weeks, public health authorities said Wednesday.
However, Honore-Mercier Hospital “is not out of the woods yet’‘ and will have to wait several more weeks before it can declare officially that the outbreak is over, said Jocelyne Sauve, regional director of pubic health.
She warned staff not to let their guard down, given that a “hyper-virulent’‘ strain of Clostridium difficile has been circulating in Quebec since 2003.
Honore-Mercier has had three outbreaks of the superbug this year, with a total of 31 patients infected.
An internal review found “troubling’‘ gaps in the hospital’s handling of the latest outbreak, Sauve said.
Regina Leader Post http://tinyurl.com/y2g4vz
Official worried Crowns aren’t ready Pamela Cowan, Leader-Post Published: Saturday, November 18, 2006
Despite intense planning by civic, provincial and federal authorities to deal with an influenza pandemic, a health official believes many organizations don’t have contingency plans in place — including the Crown corporations.
At a public influenza pandemic forum, Jim Slater, co-chair of the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region’s pandemic steering committee, said the Crowns need to step up their business continuity plans.
“We can’t deliver any health care if we don’t have utilities,” Slater said.
Health officials will take the lead when an influenza pandemic strikes, but all sectors of society will be affected since 35 to 50 per cent of workers are expected to be absent during a pandemic that could last up to 12 weeks.
From the actual CMAJ paper:- http://tinyurl.com/y9o75q
Methods: We applied a collaborative process using best evidence, expert panels, stakeholder consultations and ethical principles to develop a triage protocol for prioritizing access to critical care resources, including mechanical ventilation, during a pandemic.
Results: The triage protocol uses the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score and has 4 main components: inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria, minimum qualifications for survival and a prioritization tool.
Interpretation: This protocol is intended to provide guidance for making triage decisions during the initial days to weeks of an influenza pandemic if the critical care system becomes overwhelmed. Although we designed this protocol for use during an influenza pandemic, the triage protocol would apply to patients both with and without influenza, since all patients must share a single pool of critical care resources.
The recent outbreaks of avian influenza (H5N1)1–4 have placed a renewed emphasis on preparing for an influenza pandemic in humans.5,6 Developing plans to deal with the allocation of critical care resources, including mechanical ventilators, which will likely become scarce during a pandemic,6–8 presents a significant challenge. Health care systems in the developed world have rarely encountered the type of resource scarcities envisaged during an influenza pandemic. Models of the potential impact of a pandemic on the Ontario population predict that hospital admissions for influenza will peak at 1823 per day over a 6-week period. 9 This translates to 72% of the total hospital capacity being used by influenza patients. Similarly, the demand for intensive care unit (ICU) resources, solely for patients with influenza, would peak at 171% of current ICU bed capacity and 118% of the ventilator capacity. These figures do not take into account the current usage rate of critical care for patients without influenza, which is nearly at 100%. Nor does this model factor in the availability of human resources. Surge response strategies10 (e.g., scaling back elective procedures, opening additional critical care areas and implementing the use of “mass critical care”11,12) will partially mitigate the sudden demand for medical care during an influenza pandemic; however, these strategies will be inadequate to fully address the demands on the health care system.
closed and continued here