The event was to gauge the county's readiness for the arrival of an airborne disease like avian flu.

By TJ GREANEY

Southeast Missourian

Asking "what if" can be fun, but when contagious disease is the topic, the implications are deadly serious.

Approximately 65 area officials, medical professionals, first responders and others met Wednesday at the Osage Community Centre for a "table top" exercise. The event was to gauge the county's readiness for the arrival of an airborne disease like avian flu.

The theme of the meeting was that no matter how well officials plan, maintaining order will be difficult once panic takes hold of the community.

"We can sit around here and plan for different situations, but when people start dying, that's when you start doing things differently," said Cape Girardeau County Emergency Operations Center director Dave Hitt.

Cape Girardeau Area Magnet executive director Mitch Robinson agreed. He said even if public places and schools remain open, fear could cause people to quarantine themselves.

"I'm not going to be sending my kids to an environment that's already a breeding ground for all sorts of germs," he said of the schools. "It's getting scarier and scarier as we talk today."

Cape Girardeau County has an estimated 460 law enforcement and fire personnel and 425 doctors at its two hospitals. A low projection of the impact of avian flu estimates 28,292 infected people in the county alone.

One hospital representative said anything greater than 100 new patients per day would likely exceed the facility's resources.

At the meeting, moderators presented the group with three hypothetical scenarios.

In the first, a respiratory illness struck Asia with those officials struggling to quarantine the sick. In the second, the virus came to Southeast Missouri and made 10 percent of people sick. In the third, an epidemic hit the area with an infection rate of roughly 50 percent and left 6,000 dead in three weeks.

Charlotte Craig, director of the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center, said the recent illnesses and evacuation of the Mississippi Queen riverboat opened her eyes to the difficulty of quarantine.

"We're not going to be able to enforce it," she said.

Municipalities in the area each passed an ordinance earlier this year ceding quarantine power to the health center in the event of a pandemic.

Craig also said she was surprised to find the largest retailer in the area, Wal-Mart, has no plan in place to make goods available in the event of a catastrophe.

Retired nurse and Cape Girardeau City Councilwoman Marcia Ritter took the opportunity to advertise the local chapter of the Medical Reserve Corps. The organization is essentially a group of health professionals who are no longer employed but can help in the event of an emergency.

Ritter also suggested using drivers and vehicles from the Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority to help move the sick.

John Russell, medical director of the Cape Girardeau Pediatric Rural Health Clinic, said even if there are enough responders, they may have to make difficult decisions in determining which patients go to hospitals and which remain in isolation.

"They need to ask themselves, does this patient need to go anywhere or should we contact some other community resource and have that patient stay home," he said.

tgreaney@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245