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The Exercise Cumpston 06 report has been released by the Commonwealth Government Office of Health Protection.
Exercise Cumpston was a four-day live pandemic influenza simulation held in October 2006. It aimed to exercise and validate the implementation of the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza.
The report recommends such actions as streamlining decision making structures and consultative processes and updating the National Action Plan to address policy gaps.

Below is a list of the key recommendations
Recommendation 1: Usual decision-making structures and consultative processes need to be streamlined to ensure timely responses in an emergency.
Recommendation 2: National pandemic plans (the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, the National Action Plan and other relevant plans) need updating to provide for a more flexible layering of preparedness and response measures according to the severity of the pandemic and available response capacity.
Recommendation 3: Health electronic communications systems, including the Health Alert Network and the Department of Health and Ageing website, need to be further developed and exercised.
Recommendation 4: There is an urgent need for improved whole-of-government and crossjurisdictional communications mechanisms to ensure consistent and coordinated delivery of public messages.
Recommendation 5: The concept and operation of public health policies, such as social distancing, need to be explained to the public with public communication messages and strategies prepared ahead of time.
Recommendation 6: A nationally agreed framework for pandemic influenza surveillance should form an annex to the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, and should be underpinned by operational plans and improved information and communications technology.
Recommendation 7: Individual jurisdictions should ensure operational lessons learned from exercise activities are shared with all state and territory health departments and other relevant groups.
Recommendation 8: Further clarification of Commonwealth quarantine and state and territory public health and health emergency legislation is needed to ensure smooth operational interaction. This will include detailed operational procedures for triggering and applying the relevant powers.
Recommendation 9: The Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza needs further updating and fleshing out in some policy areas to ensure nationally consistent and streamlined approaches, including to border quarantine, social distancing, access to antivirals and vaccines and influenza assessment centres.
Recommendation 10: General practitioners, community pharmacies and other primary care providers need to be better integrated into detailed plans at the national and jurisdictional level.
Recommendation 11: Procedures for health incident rooms and operations centres need to be reviewed to ensure seamless support for decision making and experience of command, control and coordination in emergencies are built in.
Recommendation 12: The exercise did not test Australia’s whole-of-government capacity to respond over an extended period. Further work is needed to ensure responses can be sustained over a prolonged period through planning for workforce training and surge capacity, scenario-based contingency planning and a continuing program of pandemic preparedness exercises.
The report can be found here

Upcoming pandemic courses – Last until November

The last public courses for pandemic officers until November 2007 will be held in late June.

Working as your organisation's pandemic officer course
Canberra: 28 August 2007

Pandemic Influenza Exercise Day for Workplace Influenza Officers
Canberra: 29 August 2007

Organisations which have attended these courses include:

Department of Health releases new education material

The Department of Health has released The flu and you: help stop the spread education material. The material gives advice on proper hygiene practices to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses.
The brochures can be found here

Presentations and Audio files from the Pandemic History Conference now available

On 13 June, the Pandemic History Conference: Lessons from the Past for Today’s Pandemic Planners and Officers conference was held in Canberra.
It was an important conference enabling lessons of the past to be discussed by pandemic practitioners today. Below were the speakers.

The conference proceedings will be produced into a publication in the near future.
Audio files and powerpoints are available here.

Release of the book Western Isolation: The Perth experience of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic

At the Pandemic History conference on 13 June, the book Western Isolation: The Perth experience of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic was released.
The book was written by Bev Blackwell.

In early 1919, when the citizens of Australia’s eastern states were succumbing to the Spanish influenza pandemic in their thousands, Perth was free of the disease. Its border quarantine gave it an additional six months of valuable preparation time and the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of NSW, Queensland and Victoria. Thus, Perth suffered far less proportionally than the other States when influenza finally breached its borders.

This book tells the story of Perth’s experience with influenza and why it was so different from that of eastern Australia. It is the second of three books about Australia’s experience of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.
Information here.

Flu linked to heart attacks

The European Society of Cardiology has called for people with heart disease to get their seasonal influenza vaccinations following research that links cardiovascular events with influenza. The research published in the European Heart Journal shows that during influenza epidemics there is a significant rise in cardiovascular deaths.

However, research by the Australian Lung Foundation has found that while 80 percent of people aged over 65 receive their free influenza vaccination, less than 50 percent of people with medical risk factors receive an annual vaccination. Likewise, less than 50 percent of healthcare workers receive annual flu vaccinations.

The European Society of Cardiology report can be found here.
The Australian Lung Foundation report can be found here.

Cold Hard Facts report

The inaugural Kleenex Anti-viral Tissues Cold Hard Facts Report has been released.

The report surveyed 502 parents of children aged under 12 years of age and looks at such attitudes as parental leave when children are sick, and family cough and cold expenditure. The average Australian family with children will be struck down by coughs and colds more than 13 times a year, yet only 36 percent of parents believe hand contact is a primary means of transmitting coughs and colds.

The Kleenex Anti-viral Tissues Cold Hard Facts Report can be found here.

Leadership forum and blog on pandemic preparedness

US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt will convene a Leadership Forum on pandemic preparedness in Washington DC on June 13.

The interactive forum will bring together influential leaders from the business, faith, civic and health care sectors to participate in discussions to help Americans become more prepared for a possible influenza pandemic.
To prepare for the pandemic, the Department of Health and Human Services is also hosting a five-week blog summit.

The blog can be joined here.

Ensuring your organisation and staff are prepared for a pandemic influenza outbeak. For a demonstration, please contact Lee Stewart on 0410 559 625 or Keanne Stephenson on 0412 472 766 or email keanne.stephenson@pandemic.net.au

New virus detection system

Ibis Biosciences has developed a new device which can quickly detect 92 different viruses, including several strains of the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
The mass spectrometer device called T5000 can be used in big hospitals to identify new drug-resistant infections in just four hours.
"Therefore, we can keep up with the virus, even if there is a new variant of H5N1 circulating that is different from last year's," executive director of Ibis Biosciences Ranga Sampath said.

Research on the device can be found here.

New avian influenza strain found in Wales (UK)

An infection of H7N2 avian influenza was found in birds in Wales and confirmed by the UK Health Protection Agency on the 25 May.
The strain does not transmit easily to humans and is only causes mild illness in humans. Nine people associated with the incident were tested, four of which were positive for the disease. All have since been discharged from hospital.

APEC Health Ministers Meeting

The APEC Health Ministers Meeting was held in Sydney on 7-8 June.
Member countries shared their experiences and knowledge in pandemic disease preparedness and endorsed the APEC Functioning Economies in times of Pandemic Guidelines. The guidelines cover planning and preparedness, communications and information, essential services and vital supplied, financial systems and movement between and within countries.

Download the Health Ministers Meeting Outcomes Statement here.

FDA Finalizes Guidance for Pandemic Influenza Vaccines

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released new guidance for vaccine manufacture and licensing during an influenza pandemic.

The guidance is designed to speed up the production process so that more manufacturers can enter the market. It includes requirements such as a new Biologics License Application to ensure each vaccine has its own trade name and labelling, and the recommendation of certain additives to improve the immune response of vaccines.

Exercise Cumpston 06 report released