Posted By A. Fergusson I am not technically qualified to answer about the virus but I am not sure why we are so concerned with the 'possible' risk from bird flu. I believe the risk has been based on the virus being passed from person to person. This has not been proven to happen, with cases of infection coming from contact with birds. We are not on a migration route for birds from affected countries either. Perhaps we should be more focused on the significant and real risks we are exposed to every day, these we do know, these do affect us, and these we can do something about. It is a shame that the promotion of safety does not receive the same media interest, our jobs would be so much easier if it did.

Posted By DaveT Am I mis-reading things in this forum. NO RISK TO HUMANS as virus passed for bird to bird. A government health official has predicted 50,000 humans in the U.K. to die from this very serious threat. Not this year but next year!!!

Posted By Steven Surely only those who work in the poultry industry need to ensure that they have an emergency plan in place if it is going to effect the health and safety of their employees. From what i understand the bird flu cannot be transmitted through food if it is cooked correctly as the heat will kill of any infections. Unless your employees have direct contact with poultry then I don't see how it could effect you.

Posted By Mark Talbot Steven, never shared a public space with someone sneezing? If it does mutate to a human-deadly transferrable form (big "if") we can expect it to spread outwards from the poultry workers quite easily. Wild birds could pass it to any domesticated chickens, ducks, geese, etc., and who knows how that will affect our population.

Posted By Jennifer Kelly Like the first respondant I am still puzzled that this question was asked in the first place and why it should relate to young people with learning difficulties.

Posted By Cr8r If / when bird flu has mutated into a human to human virus, it is apparently expected to kill 50,000 in the UK. There's about 56 million of us here - so why will only 50,000 be fatal? My guess is that as always it will worst affect the very young, the very old and people with conditions that makes them vulnerable. Should we not be using this time to make sure we are all as strong and healthy as possible, so if it comes, we have the best chance of fighting it off? Can't help but think that the working climate is different now. In my first job, there were 8,500 employees on just that site. If you so much as sniffed, you were sent home and ordered not to return until you were better. The reason - a cold or bout of flu might not affect you too adversely but you will spread it to others who will be worse affected. They had done studies that showed it was cost effective to send people home who were fit to work, rather than have half the workforce off sick for real. Most places now seem to have "presenteeism", where we feel we must "soldier on" regardless. Perhaps now would be a good time to re-examine the wiseness of this approach.

Posted By J Knight I agree with Bob on this, rebuilding Spanish Flu is a bizarre and reckless thing to have done; now that was a nasty piece of work, John

Posted By Nigel Hammond Wow, many thanks for so many responses. I asked this question because a)I can guarentee a member of staff will ask me what we are doing about it - and I hope to give an intellegent informed reply! - even if the answer is "nothing for now"., b) our MD has asked me to look into it! and c)Even if this is media hype, I feel that part of the emergency & contingency planning process should be to consider each scare as it arises and see if we need to prepare in anyway - with a level of effort that is proportionate to the risks. As for the learning disability bit - I put that on my email because I thought it might be useful to put my particular organisation in context for any replies. Most people with learning disabilities have no greater risk than others - except for a minority who require medical care or who are elderly or infirmed. I suppose a unique aspect is that we have a duty of care to educate the people we support about any risks and health care needs such as vaccinations because many would not understand the risks and precautions without our help. We also need to keep the staff well so they can provide that support - and because we care about them!

Posted By Kim Sunley Nigel You may want to contact the emergency planning officer for your local authority and/or Primary Care Trust(PCT)for advice. As a PCT they will be required to develop flu plans on how to deal with an outbreak of a pandemic where any influenza virus undergoes major change and a new virus emerges to which humans are not immune. I imagine that either social services or primary care (depending on local commissioning arrangements) would consider your type of organisation in its plan as you are providing care to vulnerable people.

Posted By John Webster A 'flu epidemic should always be part of the emergency planning for any business, and particularly so for those of us in the health & social care sector. Not only would we loose staff to the 'flu, but patient numbers would increase and existing patients/clients who develop flu become more dependant. Add to this that many workers will be family people and if a child of the family is sick, that's a parent off work as well. Furthermore, the health & social care sector is heavily dependent on women working part time and often providing a second household income, so where there is a choice of which parent stays at home, it will disproportionately affect the part timers. Add nursery and school closures and that's a significant proportion of the workforce missing. Every winter we undertake vaccination programmes for those most vulnerable and staff are encouraged to take up the vaccine as well - this year all staff being vaccinated will be entered into a prize draw. The vaccine is effective against "common or garden" strains of 'flu, but is likely to be ineffective against a new strain. Until there is an outbreak and the strain is identified, a vaccine against a new strain cannot be developed. Once it is, it takes several months for sufficient quantities to be available for mass vaccination. The UK government has, for a change, been particularly pro-active in ordering and stockpiling millions of doses of anti-viral drugs (unlike most of the rest of the EU), which should be available to treat the vulnerable and key workers. These drugs would be our only defence in the first wave of a new-strain pandemic, but a vaccine should be ready for subsequent waves. But some of the figures flying about are just scaremongering when taken out of context. Avian flu' has directly infected some 60+ people in the World (hardly a threat), of which half have died, and most were fit, younger people. Popular press inference: If 25% of the population gets avian 'flu (typical for a pandemic), then half will die, that's over 7 million people in the UK !!!!. As it affects working age people then we will loose our working population. The fact is, the only victims so far are poultry workers, ie people of working age in very close contact with vast numbers of infected birds. Should the disease become transmissible between humans IT WILL NO LONGER BE AVIAN FLU, but a new strain of human 'flu in its own right. So there is no reason to believe that, if it did happen, the new strain would be any worse than pandemics of the past, and that means planning for loss of about a third of staff at any one time. As for me, I will be taking the routine vaccine, stocking up on paracetamol and hot Toddys at home, brushing up my manual handling to be available as a stand-in hospital porter, and making sure the duty manager knows how to enter this forum to ask for help if I'm laid up or snuff it. John

Posted By Ron Hunter I recommend anyone interested in this issue get hold of a copy of the latest issue of National Geographic- good factually based info as opposed to the sensationalist claptrap in the tabloids. There is a real issue with the rate of spread of a new pandemic, primarily due to modern airplane travel - there may be insufficient time to gather enough freshly fertilised eggs to 'grow' the effective vaccine, and hence the pandemic could be proportionate in its effects to that of 1918 - always assuming the human to human vector mutation arises. Incidentally, it appears that all 'flu' arises from the gut of wild birds.

Posted By Ken Taylor So far I have only sent out copies of the information from the DoH website - but it is a matter of concern to those of us with bird collections and migrating water fowl and could become of much greater concern in relation to the humans we have in care and under our charge.

Posted By J Knight Basically, Turkey, the Balkans and the Black Sea do get winter influxes of birds from West Siberia and. Our wintering wildfowl by and large originate from further west, from Russia proper, Northern Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland. The current distribution of known cases of bird flu is consistent with there being no immediate threat from migrating birds, though it could appear that the flu is 'getting closer'. John