Swine Flu has passed out of the minds of the press - but on blogs dedicated to the subject, things are getting worse especially in Southern Hemisphere. Report says we were overwhelmed;
Swine Flu ‘Overwhelmed’ U.S. Health-Care System, Report Says
By Catherine Larkin
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- The swine flu outbreak has overwhelmed the U.S. health-care system, a report said.
Communication between government agencies and doctors isn’t well coordinated and the World Health Organization’s six-step pandemic-alert scale causes confusion, according to an analysis released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Trust for America’s Health and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity. Worried citizens flood emergency rooms while undocumented immigrants and the uninsured delay getting medical care, the report said.
The H1N1 influenza virus has spread to more than 11,000 people in the U.S. and caused 17 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. WHO is at phase 5 of its alert scale, meaning a pandemic is imminent, even as the bug causes little more than a fever and cough in most patients. Researchers say it is critical to address vulnerabilities in the system before a crisis strikes.
“H1N1 is a real-world test of our initial emergency response capabilities,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit organization in Washington, in an e-mailed statement. “The country is significantly ahead of where we were a few years ago. However, the outbreak also revealed serious gaps in our nation’s preparedness.”
The report includes 10 recommendations for strengthening the public-health infrastructure, including halting job cuts in state and local health departments, providing care for uninsured Americans during an emergency and helping health-care facilities prepare for a surge in new patients.
The work was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a Princeton, New Jersey-based endowment fund that provided $523.3 million in grants and contracts last year to support health programs in the U.S., according to its Web site. The family of Robert Wood Johnson started Johnson & Johnson, now the world’s largest health-care products company.
To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Larkin in Washington at clarkin4@bloomberg.net. |
