'You can't wait for the feds to be the cavalry to come over the hill to rescue you,' echoes William Schaffner, MD, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. That is a message Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt brought across the country as he traveled state-to-state this past year. One fact portrayed vividly in the movie, underpinning even the federal plan: The federal government will have a stockpile and multi-agency tasks, but the ultimate response will be local. They should already be working with their state and local health departments and hospital associations to coordinate planning, says Deborah Levy, PhD, MPH, senior adviser for health care preparedness at the division of health care promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (The report is available at Hospitals should consider these possibilities as they draft pandemic influenza plans, experts say. The implementation plan of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, released in May, cautions that as much as 40% of the work force could be out sick during a pandemic peak. That dire scene was portrayed in the ABC movie on bird flu it reflected some of the worst-case predictions contained in federal plans. Is this a made-for-TV movie or a scenario in the federal plan?

This is like Hurricane Katrina hitting in every state at the same time, a government leader says.

Businesses and schools are closed, hospitals are overflowing, and nurses are walking off the job. The trucking industry has collapsed, and basics such as food and medicine are in short supply. Neighborhoods are sealed off with barbed wire fences. Hospitals must stockpile, prepare for the worst, plan says Pandemic survival guide: Be prepared and don't wait for the feds

Survival guide pdf