I confess that there was a part me, the infectious disease/infection prevention side that was slightly envious of the H1N1 (swine flu) situation back home. I felt like we had been talking about the big outbreak of bird flu for years, so what if we confused the animal, bird, pig whatever. I wanted to see how it all played out. I spent a lot of time reading about influenza, learned about how the vaccine is made, how effective it is, wrote a paper on it for school, studied how it’s transmitted, the incubation period, and tried to lay the ground work for encouraging behaviors that would prevent the spread of flu before the big outbreak hit. And finally when it hits, I’m not there.
I suspect you are reading this and thinking I’m a nut case. And foolish of me to think I wouldn’t be involved if/when it here. The difference, I felt slightly more prepared to handle it back home. I’m less sure about how things will play out here.
We had our first emergency preparedness meeting about this yesterday. The Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) announced the night before that they were closing ALL the schools in the country for the next 3 weeks. I don’t know what the absentee rate has been or even how many confirmed cases we have. I think it’s some where between 250-300. We have seen a few outpatient suspected cases. No staff has been out with influenza like symptoms. Not yet at least –thank goodness. But each day, more and more people are seen in the community wearing masks. Women are wrapping their headscarf’s around their nose and mouth. I am giving my elevator speech on hand washing but I think the next few weeks are going to be really interesting on a lot of different fronts.
Keep Smiling!!
