A Bird Flu scenario will be played out tomorrow in Lee County. The Lee County Health Department is the lead agency in the exercise that will measure response to the impending presence of bird flu in the community. Law enforcement, hospital staff, fire and rescue and other private and public agencies will also take part. The Lee County Emergency Operations Center will be the command post. Steven Fetner is Disaster Preparedness Coordinator for the Health Department.

“What we’re doing is testing our ability to communicate with each other to integrate our services and to sort of be on the same page as to how we would gear up to respond to an event like this“

Officials with the World Health Organization have warned it may only be a matter of time before there is a deadly bird flu pandemic. Other municipalities around the country are going through similar exercises to prepare for that possibility. Collier County has already staged one drill. Charlotte County will hold one in January. Valerie Alker, W-G-C-U News.
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An exercise to test the handling of a bird flu alert will be played out tomorrow in Lee County. World Health Officials fear bird – or avian – flu could become a pandemic. To prepare for that possibility, healthcare workers and others will be tested on their response to an unrehearsed scenario. Steve Fetner of the Lee County Health Department says the purpose is to facilitate a smooth response to the real thing.

“What they will do is sort of run through a rolling scenario that brings it here to lee county and injects all kinds of situations – what would you do if? Hospitals what are you going to do if you run out of bed space, things of that nature. We want people to react as if it were a real situation so they have no preconceived ideas about what they would do.”

If the worst-case scenario plays out and bird flu becomes a pandemic – one quarter of people living in the U-S might become infected. Collier County has already had a bird flu exercise – Charlotte plans one for January.