Problems burying british children
- From: "Mabon Dane" <mdane@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 1 Apr 2006 17:31:40 -0800
***Comment***
As the newspaper report shows below there are concerns that Britain is
not ready for the deaths H5N1 will bring. H5N1 in its present form
kills 90% of all under 20's it infects so the British are going to have
to prepare for the current population of British children to be wiped
out by H5N1. My concern is that local authorities have not made any
proper arrangements to bury our children, which I guess will be huge
pits like the plague pits a few hundred years ago.
Mabon Dane
Mass graves planned if bird flu pandemic reaches Britain
By Adam Stones
(Filed: 02/04/2006)
Mass burials are being considered by the Home Office as part of
contingency plans for a possible avian flu pandemic.
A "prudent worst case" assessment suggested that 320,000 could die in
Britain if the H5N1 virus mutated into a form contagious between
humans, according to a confidential report.
Bird flu factfile
The paper - said to have been discussed by a Cabinet committee - said
that the huge number of deaths would lead to delays of up to 17 weeks
in burying or cremating victims. It warned that the prospect of "common
burial" would stir up images of the mass pits used to bury victims of
the Great Plague in 1665.
"It might involve a large number of coffins buried in the same place at
the same time, in such a way that allowed for individual graves to be
marked," said the report.
Town halls could deal with what it termed a "base case" of 48,000
deaths in England and Wales during a 15-week pandemic.
"Even with ramping local management capacity by 100 per cent, the
prudent worst case of 320,000 excess deaths is projected to lead to a
delay of some 17 weeks from death to burial or cremation."
Should the outbreak kill 2.5 per cent of those who contract the flu, it
warns, "no matter what emergency arrangements are put in place there
are likely to be substantially more deaths than can be managed within
current time-scales". The report, Managing Excess Deaths in an
Influenza Pandemic, is dated March 22 and says that a vaccine would not
be available at least for "the first wave" of a pandemic.
The report was apparently discussed last week in Cabinet sub-committee
MISC 32, chaired by Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, reports The
Sunday Times. A Home Office spokesman refused to comment on the report
or whether it had been discussed.
He said: "The Government is taking very seriously the possible threat
of an influenza pandemic. Prudent precautionary planning is under way
across all elements of the response, including the NHS other essential
services and local authorities."
There have already been warnings that public services would be unable
to cope with a bird flu pandemic. Intensive care units would collapse
under the extra demand, claims Richard Marsh, a critical care
specialist at Northampton General Hospital.
In an article in the British Medical Journal, he said that if an
outbreak was similar to those in Asia, a typical large district
hospital would need to find 30 extra beds for patients with respiratory
failure.
"This is between four and five times the number of intensive care beds
available in most general hospitals. We are unlikely to be able to
mobilise the equipment and staff to achieve such a temporary increase
in provision."
It has been reported that GP surgeries have been put on alert to look
for patients with bird flu-like symptoms, who may have come in contact
with sickly birds. Previously, doctors had been told only to screen
foreigners from "at-risk" countries who had come into contact with
poultry.
Despite such concerns, the Department of Health has made the decision
not to launch a public information campaign on the possible spread of
bird flu because of fears that it would cause "panic".
The Government announced recently that it had awarded contracts worth
£33 million to British companies to make 3.5 million doses of a
vaccine to protect humans against the H5N1 strain.
The latest bird flu death was in Indonesia, which has confirmed its
23rd human fatality. The victim was a one-year-old girl, who died in
Jakarta last week. An outbreak last month in Azerbaijan killed five
young people.
In February it was discovered that the H5N1 virus had struck a turkey
farm in south-east France, bringing closer the spectre of an outbreak
in Britain.
.
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