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Fighting the Flu

Posted on | May 7, 2009 | 1,461 views |

Ohio State mobilizes its army of experts to deal with the influenza outbreak

by Jeff McCallister

When word came from health agencies in Mexico that a strain of influenza virus was both spreading rapidly and becoming deadly, it didn’t take long for Ohio State to mobilize for a fight.

“We’ve had a plan in place for three years now,” said Bob Armstrong, Ohio State’s emergency management director. “When we looked at the information we were getting, it became obvious that it was time to implement those plans.”

So the Medical Center went on the alert, not only keeping up with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, but also increasing measures in-house to identify potential patients closer to home.“The Medical Center immediately took the lead in the university’s response,” Armstrong said. “It’s the same as if we had a fire emergency on campus, the fire chief would be in charge. When there’s a medical emergency, everyone looks to the Medical Center for guidance and leadership in dealing with the threat.”

So even before the virus crossed the border into the United States — and, in close order, into Ohio and then onto the OSU campus — leadership had flipped the switch to implement a plan to deal with it.

Notifications and warnings went out to each hospital, clinic and office within the Medical Center to inform staff and students of the threat and what steps could be taken to alleviate it. 

An employee of the medical Center was confirmed to have contracted the virus, and it was detected early in large measure due to the mobilization efforts that were enacted. 

“Anytime there’s an emergency action plan implemented for anything, it seems as if when folks look back at what went wrong with the plan, they always cite communication,” said Mike Gregory, the Medical Center’s Director of Safety. 

“So a big part of our plan involves communication, and I think we’ve been pretty effective.”

Communicators across campus, especially within the colleges of Public Health, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, mobilized experts to keep both the campus and the general public informed.

The information that began to flow out was both proactive — educating the population on how to prevent the spread of the disease — and reactive — dispelling the many rumors that arose because the flu had been labeled “swine flu.”

Julie Mangino from the College of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Disease immediately came up with a list of actions people could take to prevent, or at least slow down, the spread of the disease, and it was widely disseminated both internally through e-mails from Executive Vice President and Provost Joe Alutto, Vice President for Human Resources Larry Lewellen and vice president for Student Life Javaune Adams-Gaston and externally through a news release.

Richard Slemons, professor and influenza expert in the Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, held a Q&A with gathered media to offer an historical perspective on past influenza outbreaks as well as an overview of his work on the viruses.

Animal health expert Mo Saif, head of OARDC’s Food Animal Health Research Program — the only OSU lab that had been working on swine flu before the outbreak — was available to media and was quoted in news stories around the country.

“We know we have a lot of knowledge and experience within the university and it’s nice to be able to pull from that to help everyone get through the situation,” Gregory said.

The effort didn’t just end at the campus borders, either. Medical Center officials were in close collaboration with city, county and state health officials as well as a network of nearly 30 other hospitals regionally, sharing information and  coordinating efforts.

“We know that the Ohio State University brand, that reputation, is something that people will recognize and look to with trust when situations like this come up,” Armstrong said.

As of early Tuesday, only the one case had been confirmed on campus. A freshman student was still listed as a “probable case.” Officials in Mexico reported a leveling off of both new cases and fatalities.

But neither Armstrong nor Gregory were ready to claim victory over the outbreak.

“We know we’ll have to stay vigilant on this one,” Gregory said. “The virus can seem to disappear over the summer, then come back even worse when it starts to get cold again.”

But in the mean time, both were gratified to see that the plan of action for just such an outbreak had been put through its paces.

“Right now it appears, for the moment, that this isn’t “the Big One,” Armstrong said. “That could change at any time through the ebb and flow of these things. But this has been a good opportunity for is to test our plans and identify things we can do even better the next time the need arises.”

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