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ANGOLA — Health care officials from the four-county area are learning lessons and facing shortages due to pandemic H1N1 influenza.
The two waves of H1N1 that have hit the area have put to the test emergency planning at area hospitals, where officials are seeing shortages of certain supplies due to federal treatment requirements.
“I think this has kind of taught us about our supply issues,” said Rhonda Blevins, infection control manager at DeKalb Memorial Hospital, Auburn.
The key item that hospitals have shortages of are N-95 masks. These are masks that filter out 95 percent of particulate matter.
These are specialized masks that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety Health Administration require health care professionals to use when treating people with H1N1 and other respiratory ailments, such as tuberculosis.
Because of this requirement, the masks are difficult to come by.
“The problem is, we can’t get them. We have a limited supply of them. Seeing that everyone in the world is ordering them, they’re tough to get,” Blevins said.
“Pretty much everybody’s in short supply. On the good side, we stockpiled,” said Laura Lutterbeck, director of community relations at Cameron Memorial Community Hospital, Angola.
Julie Buttgen, spokeswoman for Parkview Noble Hospital, Kendallville, said other items were also running short, including swabs used in sampling for flu and Tamiflu, a medicine that can be used to treat the symptoms of H1N1 but not seasonal flu.
“We’ve seen shortages in other areas,” Buttgen said.
These sort of challenges have kept hospital officials on their toes and have tested the effectiveness of their emergency plans.
“It’s been a good test run for when we run into a bigger pandemic,” Buttgen said.
Lutterbeck agreed.
“It causes the departments to work together,” she said. “This little, small outbrerak makes you rethink, replan.”
Area hospitals and health departments started fine tuning their plans a few years ago following the outbreak of avian flu and SARS elsewhere in the world.
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