Dear colleague

The national media is giving extensive coverage to the swine flu situation and there is a lot of information available to the public through the Department of Health and Health Protection Agency. What we wanted to do was to present our key stakeholders with an outline of the position here in Hertfordshire.

For some years now, we have been working hard on a local level to draw up robust plans to deal with an occurrence of pandemic flu. This planning has seen us here in the PCTs working closely with a range of partners across the county, including Hertfordshire County Council, the police service, fire service, colleagues in local councils together with acute Trusts and other health providers. And now we are putting these plans into action. The Local Resilience Forum has convened a strategic co-ordinating group that is chaired by the PCT and meeting twice-weekly, working effectively to co-ordinate our approach.

There is a high level of preparedness here for the situation we find ourselves in and each day teams of staff are working together to ensure that as the disease moves into different phases, we are in a very strong position to protect and to treat the people of Hertfordshire as required. This involves, for example, liaising with HPA and our colleagues at the Strategic Health Authority to secure the appropriate quantities of antiviral drugs and arranging for their storage and distribution.

Other procurement issues we are handling include ensuring we have sufficient quantities of masks and other protective equipment for our health professionals Our GP colleagues are crucial to the success of our operation and so we are providing them with regular briefings and a contact point for all their queries and issues.

Communication with the public is so important during times such as these. We are providing regularly updated material on our website and working with partners across the county so that they too are providing useful information and in a consistent way. We are also finding our local media helpful in covering the key messages including those that concern what everyone as individuals can do to prevent infection. We will continue to send out appropriate communications to our wide range of audiences as matters unfold.

At the time of writing there were no confirmed cases in Hertfordshire and whilst we hope this remains the case, we also know that this situation may well change in the coming weeks. On a positive note, we are confident that, with continued joint working with our partners, we will handle any escalation in severity effectively.

If you do want to know more, our websites contain additional information and the HPA site is very comprehensive and contains a wealth of useful material.

www.wherts-pcts.nhs.uk
www.enherts-pct.nhs.uk
www.hpa.org.uk

With best wishes

Dr Jane Halpin
Director of Public Health