A website launched by the governor's office Tuesday seeks to educate Wisconsinites about the global threats stemming from a pandemic flu breakout.
The website also provides information about the avian flu and the less exotic seasonal flu and contains specific pages for businesses, communities, schools and families searching for ways to protect themselves should the pandemic flu strike.
""We are doing everything possible to be prepared and to keep our residents as safe and healthy as possible during a pandemic,"" Gov. Jim Doyle said in a statement.
Kathleen Poi, executive director of University Health Services, echoed the belief of those in the medical community in regard to a pandemic flu outbreak.
""The question isn't if its going to happen, it's more when it's going to happen,"" Poi said.
Though Generation X and the following ""millennial"" generation hold no recollection of a worldwide flu pandemic—the last occurred in 1968—Poi noted the historical consistency of periodic pandemics. She said that over the last 200 to 300 years, the world has witnessed a pandemic approximately every 40 years.
In addition to the most recent pandemic, the 20th century was hit two other times. Pandemics in 1957 and 1968 both saw a high rate of morbidity—people not fatally sick—but generally low levels of mortality. However, the 1918 flu outbreak saw high levels of mortality, even among healthy young adults.
Scientists cannot predict what type of flu will lead the next pandemic because the flu occurs when a mutation forms a new virus foreign to the human body. Poi said with today's technology, researchers still need more than six months to produce effective vaccines able to combat a new flu.
Wisconsin's newly launched flu website points to the highly publicized avian flu as the possible instigator of the next worldwide flu outbreak, stating ""there is a chance that the virus could mutate to a new flu virus that spreads easily from person to person."" As of now, the avian flu has only spread from bird to human.
Poi thinks the website serves as a necessary tool for informing the public of basic flu information.
""It tells people that people in government ... are looking at this and there's research going on,"" Poi said.
Citing ""the old fashioned public health practices,"" Poi said people should protect themselves from pandemic flu using the same precautionary measures that protect against the equally problematic seasonal flu—washing hands, covering coughs and staying home when sick.
