H1N1 Pandemic Officially Ends

• 8/13/2010
• Author: Jim Parker
• Category: Perspectives on Patient Safety Blog
• 5957 Views
• 0 Comments
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The H1N1 influenza pandemic that created great anxiety among health care organizations and the public for two years has ended, according to a statement released by Margaret Chan, M.D., director-general of the World Health Organization.

Perspectives on Patient Safety covered the pandemic from its first stirrings to the moment of its greatest prevalence.  In February 2010, we published a special issue that focused on the pandemic and the importance of vaccination, not only for patients, but for health care workers as well.

In the end, the H1N1 pandemic did not become the disaster everyone feared, a recurrence of the murderous 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.  The virus did not develop resistance to antiviral drugs or evolve to become more fatal. Most people who acquired the virus were able to simply let their immune systems do their job.  As of fall 2010, seasonal flu vaccines now protect against that the H1N1 strain.

For now, H1N1 slinks back into the ranks of ordinary seasonal flu that we deal with every year. However, it’s emergence allows us to test and evaluate our responses to emerging illnesses and future potentially deadly flu strains. It would be helpful for organizations to review the ways in which they responded to the pandemic and how it can be improved upon for later crises.