An H5N1-specific Preparedness Thread

My wife is an ER nurse in Mesa, Arizona. Earlier this month, one of the local hospital Emergency Rooms had to shut down for several hours due to a higher-than-usual incidence of a relative mild influenza, coupled with our usual influx of winter visitors. A resulting series of articles in the local papers showed that, even under typical circumstances, Phoenix-area hospitals are already stretched to near breaking in the wintertime, and any serious outbreak of ANYTHING could possibly cause a severe compromise of the entire hospital infrastructure here.

In otherwords, in case of a pandemic, there might not be any medical services available to you.

Over the past three weeks, my wife and a friend of mine (a physician whose church strongly recomends that he keep a years' supply of food for his family) have been talking about what a typical urban or suburban family could do to pull through, say, three weeks of possible illness with little or no hospitalization or organzied medicine available.

They have come up with several lists, and suggestions about what the possible scenarios might be and how we would meet them.

Over the next day or so, I will be posting these ideas for your comments and interest. I'd ask anyone who is interested in developing some sort of coherent preparedness approach to feel free to join in on this thread, as I'm sure we can all learn from each other.

I feel torn and not sure what to do I have been stocking some can food but not sure how serious I should be taking this pandemic. I've tried to talk to my doctor and all he says is practise good hand washing not really the answer I was looking for, so I will be watching for anything you post on H5N1 and prepardness. Thanks!

Here is a page on the pandemicflu.gov site (referenced in another recent post) that deals with individual and family preparedness, with some good resources and lists:

www.pandemicflu.gov...

I am very interested in reading the lists. thanks for sharing.