Native Americans at higher risk from H1N1 swine flu, Obama’s experts warn
President Obama’s advisory council, led by the nations’ leading scientists and engineers released a report assessing preparations for 2009-H1N1 Influenza A that outlined what steps to implement nationally to curtail a serious H1N1 pandemic.
The report said that the precise impact of the resurgence of H1N1 infection is impossible to predict but a plausible scenario is that it could produce infection in 30 to 50 percent of the U.S. population this fall and winter.
And it said that certain populations including Native American groups are considered at high risk of H1N1 influenza, and have elevated risks of severe outcomes.
It is unlikely that the H1N1 pandemic will reach the same deadly proportions as happened in the 1918-1920 Spanish flu, also an H1N1 swine flu, but the report predicted the outbreak of 2009 will be more dangerous than the 1976 swine flu outbreak.
The seriousness of H1N1 is not due to it’s severity but rather the fact that people have no or little immunity to the virus. The report indicates the possibility that overwhelming numbers of people could become infected, and that mortality could reach 30,000 to 90,000.
Dr. James Cheek, director of the Indian Health Service Division of Epidemiology and Disease Prevention said the IHS is doing a lot of the things like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, such as identifying which people are at risk.
“We’ve been in the field the last month and a half, spending a lot of time with the over 200 hospitalized cases among Native Americans in Arizona,” Cheek said. “They’re confirmed respiratory disease cases though not 100 percent confirmed H1N1 cases. We’re testing the blood of those who have recovered to see if it was H1N1. ” He said the IHS hasn’t received additional funding to fight H1N1.
Federal health officials recently announced $350 million in national grants to fight H1N1, but that money is going to states and hospitals, not to the federally recognized tribes. The National Indian Health Board cited this policy as making reservation communities increasingly vulnerable to epidemics.
An internal document produced by the National Centers for Disease Control said one disadvantage of the Public Health Emergency Response grant is that it doesn’t allow enough time for local and tribal concurrence, but instead uses alternative strong language asking the states that most or a significant amount of the funding should go to local and tribal efforts.
This grant is a little different in that by using the states as a conduit the money is available very fast for communities to use, CDC spokesman Von Roebuck said. “We’re trying to work within the system, and we’re definitely running against the clock.” He said the CDC has asked the state health departments to reach out to all local and tribal communities to provide them information about how this funding could be used, and ask that tribal governments provide information as to how they could use that funding and why they deserve the highest priority.
“As we learn more about the virus we’ll continue to reach out based on the science into where we feel that it is going to get the most information out to populations,” Roebuck said. “Protecting as many folks and as many locations is definitely our goal.”
Cheek said the IHS has a wonderful record of providing vaccinations. That vaccination machine “is geared up to deliver the new H1N1 flu vaccine to all our population the minute we get them,” Cheek said.
John Yuille Ph.D., Canadian psychologist
