NHS organisations are backing up health secretary Alan Johnson’s assertion this week that the UK is one of the countries most prepared to deal with a flu pandemic.
As cases of swine flu were confirmed in the UK, an HSJ straw poll of 15 primary care trusts this week revealed that, as required, all had plans in place to co-ordinate with councils, acute trusts and strategic health authorities, to communicate with the public and local businesses, to mobilise GPs and to distribute drugs.
All except one had designated a pandemic influenza co-ordinator.
The Department of Health would not supply HSJ with data from a 2008-09 national audit of NHS organisations’ preparedness for a pandemic.
PCTs that have already published results
But some PCTs and SHAs have already published results. NHS South East Coast said in its annual report that 96 per cent of its organisations had achieved a “score” of more than 90 per cent in the audit.
Of 14 PCTs that supplied audit data to HSJ or that provided data in board documents, eighthad scored 90 per cent or above, three had scored 80-89 per cent and three had scored 70-79 per cent.
One senior SHA source said: “What we want to know is if it was to get big, have we got plans in place? What PCTs are doing now is they’ve got all these plans and they are just filling in the holes.”
He said clarification was needed of how mass vaccination campaigns were staffed, what identification patients were asked to produce when being given medication and whether strategies could last for the duration of a pandemic.
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