Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Emergency Preparedness
Planning for the Next Disaster: Pandemic
1/11/2008
Unfortunately, although clinical trials are underway, vaccines effective against a pandemic virus are not yet generally available. Similarly, although several antiviral drugs that can reduce the severity and duration of seasonal influenza may be effective in treating pandemic influenza, they must be administered within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. Finally, virus specific vaccines and antiviral drugs are difficult to develop, test, and stockpile until after the new viral strain has emerged. And time won’t be on our side.
That leaves us with non-pharmaceutical strategies--ones that my mother, who was a rural health nurse in the 1930s, would recognize. Based on extensive mathematical modeling using the United States and Great Britain, the Nature article concluded:
- Border restrictions and/or internal travel restrictions are unlikely to delay spread by more than two to three weeks unless more than 99 percent effective;
- School closure during the peak of a pandemic can reduce peak attack rates by up to 40 percent, but has little impact on overall attack rates;
- Case isolation or household quarantine could have a significant impact, if feasible;
- Treatment of clinical cases can reduce transmission, but only if antivirals are given within a day of symptoms starting;
- Given enough drugs for 50 percent of the population, household-based prophylaxis coupled with reactive school closure could reduce clinical attack rates by 40 percent to 50 percent.
Whoa, hold it partner. Let’s go back to that third bullet. The Internet allows us to effectively work from home! The challenge to us IT folks then becomes making sure that the network and mission critical systems remain up and running--and that is something we know how to do!
A Very Short Institutional Quiz
Does your institution have a business continuity plan and process that specifically addresses a pandemic? According to Gartner’s McGee, business continuity plans that do not specifically address pandemics will not be effective.
Does your IT organization have a business continuity plan and process that specifically addresses a pandemic? One the most effective strategies to prevent the spread of infection is working online from home--and that is something IT can plan for. This can be done even if your institution does not have an institution-wide plan.
Have you tested your plan? For example, in the case of working from home, how about a planned surprise exercise in which all employees are directed not to show up for work in their office but to work from home for a day.
Where Can You Learn More?
Fortunately, there is a wealth of background material, planning documents, guidelines, and white papers available to help in developing an institutional or departmental strategy. Some of my favorite government sites are:
Recommended Reading
- Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today.
- The Quilt Coalition Rolls Out XO Communications for High-Capacity Network Services
The Quilt, a coalition of 28 regional network organizations, has added XO Communications Services to its authorized vendor list. The Quilt represents 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the United States. With this new relationship, Quilt members can purchase XO's high-speed IP transit and network transport services at competitive rates.
- Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
At the NECC 2008 conference in Texas this week, Wimba launched a new version of Wimba Classroom, the virtual classroom component of the company's Collaboration Suite. The new 5.2 release expands options for classroom capture and adds a variety of other functional and ease of use features.
- Automation Chimera: Education Is Not Management
The lure of automating workflow online so human intervention is minimized is continually reinforced in the minds of higher education administrators by examples of automated campus systems such as financials, student information systems, and other enterprise systems. But what's good for management is not always good for learning.
- Cognos Releases BI Software for Linux-based IBM System z Mainframe
Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development.
- Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
Facebook is a way to greet a colleague as if she or he is on your own campus: a wave at a distance, a hello at the corner burrito place, a honk as you both leave the campus parking lot. Informal collegiality has been extended over the miles.
