This article offers recommendations on what hospitals should do to prepare for an influenza pandemic and proposes specific actions and priorities for the purpose of making the discussion of hospital pandemic preparedness issues more operationally useful.

Since the identification of 2009-H1N1 in the spring, the virus has caused human disease worldwide and has led to the first influenza pandemic in 4 decades. In North America, despite the unexpectedness of being the early center of the emerging epidemic, public health agencies, health care systems, and medical providers were able to make the immediate switch from preparedness to response, even af...

n the list of potential bioterrorist agents, influenza would be classified as a category C agent (1). While previous influenza pandemics were naturally occurring events, an influenza pandemic could be started with an intentional release of a deliberately altered influenza strain. Even if a deliberately altered strain is not released, an influenza pandemic originating from natural origins will i...

The recent outbreaks of influenza A/H5N1 and 'swine influenza' A/H1N1 have caused global concern over the potential for a new influenza pandemic. Although it is impossible to predict when the next pandemic will occur, appropriate planning is still needed to maximize efficient use of resources and to minimize loss of life and productivity. Many tools now exist to assist countries in evaluating t...

With the increasing concern of an imminent influenza pandemic, Singapore and many other countries have been developing preparedness plans. Influenza affects an estimated 20 percent of the population of Singapore annually, and local outbreaks can last for more than 12 weeks and occur at different periods of the year. The 1968 pandemic in Singapore had a clinical attack rate of about 20 percent a...

Global concerns about an impending influenza pandemic escalated when highly pathogenic influenza A subtype H5N1 appeared in Nigeria in January 2006. The potential devastation from emergence of a pandemic strain in Africa has led to a sudden shift of public health focus to pandemic preparedness. Preparedness and control activities must work within the already strained capacity of health infrastr...

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Avian influenza (H5N1) has recently been recognized as a new emerging infectious disease that may pose a threat to international public health. Most recent developments lead to the belief that H5N1 could become the cause of the next influenza pandemic. This review discusses the characteristics of H5N1 avian influenza virus as an emerging infectious disease with the potential for pandemic develo...

Many public health departments seek to improve their capability to respond to large-scale events such as an influenza pandemic. Quality improvement (QI), a structured approach to improving performance, has not been widely applied in public health. We developed and tested a pilot QI collaborative to explore whether QI could help public health departments improve their pandemic preparedness. We d...

The World Health Organization's declaration of an imminent swine-origin influenza A pandemic in April 2009 triggered the global launch of national pandemic preparedness plans. An integral component of pandemic preparedness in many countries was the targeted use of antiviral therapy for containment, disease mitigation, and treatment. The 2009 pandemic marked the first pandemic during which influ...