by James Parks, Sep 28, 2007

With influenza season approaching, the Bush administration still has not developed complete and effective measures to combat the threat of a deadly flu pandemic.

Now comes an analysis by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which shows the federal government’s plans are inadequate and key questions about leadership and responsibility for dealing with a pandemic remain unanswered.

The 52-page report says federal plans do not adequately address leadership roles and responsibilities. For example, the plans don’t outline how the secretaries of the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security (DHS) would share leadership in a pandemic. Click here to download a copy of the report. 

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, one of the lawmakers who requested the report, told the Associated Press:  

It is vital to resolve questions of turf, responsibility, and performance in advance, rather than in the heat of an actual pandemic.

The GAO report also shows that the pandemic plans fail to meet at least five of six desirable characteristics that the agency uses to gauge the effectiveness of various federal strategies. For example, the plan lacks ways to monitor and report progress and does not project how much it would cost to fight a pandemic. 

The AFL-CIO and first responders long have pointed out that the Bush administration plans put the lives of health care workers and others in danger and doesn’t allow them to be adequately protected while they’re doing their jobs to protect the public. Several times during the past year, we’ve noted the government’s incomplete and ineffective measures. (Click here, here, here, here and here.) 

Last year, the AFL-CIO Executive Council called on the White House and Congress to act now to put in place the measures needed to protect health care workers and first responders from a pandemic influenza that will allow them to do their jobs in serving the public in the event of a national health emergency.

In any pandemic, health care workers and first responders will be most at risk because they will be on the front lines of an emergency that some government estimates predict will affect up to 35 percent of the population.

Also last year, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AFT, Communications Workers of America (CWA), United American Nurses (UAN) and the United Steelworkers petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for an emergency standard to protect health care workers, first responders and others whose jobs might put them at risk.

Not only has OSHA failed to develop a workplace standard to deal with a pandemic, but the recent guidelines, says William Kojola, the AFL-CIO’s industrial hygienist, place more emphasis on

…planning for the continuity of business operations than for comprehensive planning and preparation for the safety and health and elements of protecting workers potentially exposed to the pandemic virus at work.

The OSHA guidelines encourage employers to stockpile supplies such as soap, cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment, to allow ill workers to stay home and to be prepared to deal with a high rate of absenteeism. But the guidelines ignore some basic issues.

For example, says Kojola, OSHA guidelines never recommend that employers ensure protective gear, such as respirators to guard against possible airborne transmission, be tested to make sure they fit each worker properly. It also places little emphasis on establishing a safety and health program, a respiratory protection program and workers’ training before a pandemic hits.

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