Planning deficit: The State's pandemic influenza expert group has written to the Health Service Executive (HSE) highlighting an "important deficit in pandemic preparedness planning" in the Republic. Previous estimates said that up to 5,000 Irish people could die if there was a flu pandemic.
The chairman of the group, Prof Bill Hall, said in his letter to the HSE that, in most countries, expertise was being developed in the area of statistical modelling of the potential impact of a pandemic. But he said in the Republic only one statistician was employed in this area and the person was on a short-term contract with the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC).
"This person is on a short-term contract as a result of staff capping restrictions imposed on the organisation," he wrote.
The letter stated that "in most countries in the EU, and indeed worldwide, expertise is being developed in modelling the impact of pandemic influenza . . . Sophisticated models are being developed by teams of epidemiologists and statisticians, taking into consideration data on volumes of international travel, mixing patterns in communities, etc, with a view to determining the likely effect of population containment measures - such as banning mass gatherings - on spread of infection".
Prof Hall warned the chief executive of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, that "there is a substantial risk" that the expertise of the one person working in this area in the Republic would be lost to the State as the person doing the job had no security of tenure. "This expertise is needed now during the preparedness and alert phase of the pandemic but will also be of vital importance in the early stages of the pandemic when real, as opposed to estimated parameters, can be used in the model to predict the implications for Ireland.
"I urge you to act to ensure that this important work is protected and that HPSC is supported in developing this expertise on a permanent basis," his letter said.
The correspondence, which was sent to the HSE on December 21st, has been released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
Asked yesterday if it had been given the go-ahead to appoint a permanent statistician, a spokesman for the HPSC said it would advertise the post shortly.
However, he said the HPSC had only been given the go-ahead to recruit a full-time person in this area because it relinquished another position. "We have reluctantly relinquished the post of librarian to prioritise the recruitment of a permanent statistician and the job will be advertised shortly," he said.
Dr Darina O'Flanagan, director of the HPSC, told a press conference in Dublin last October that, based on statistical modelling at that time, it was estimated up to 5,000 Irish people could die if there was a flu pandemic.
She said a pandemic could also result in up to 14,000 people being hospitalised and in 25 per cent of workers taking five to eight working days off.
She stressed these figures were purely estimates because it was not known which strain of the influenza virus would cause the next pandemic. A pandemic would certainly occur, but nobody knew when, she said.
More than 100 people have died to date, most of them in Asia, from the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which experts believe poses the greatest threat in recent years of a global flu pandemic if it acquires the ability to pass easily between humans.
Readiness for a flu pandemic is high on the agenda of the World Health Organisation's yearly assembly, which started on a sombre note in Geneva yesterday after the sudden death of its director-general, Korean-born Lee Jong-wook (61), after emergency surgery over the weekend.