--- title: STOCK UP NOW TO BE READY IF PANDEMIC HITS date: 2006-09-01T12:47:30-07:00 author: Bill Marler canonical_url: "https://marlerclark.com/news_events/stock-up-now-to-be-ready-if-pandemic-hits" section: News --- [All News](/news_events) / # STOCK UP NOW TO BE READY IF PANDEMIC HITS Each family needs to prepare now to have food, other essentials on hand. By Jennifer L. Boen jboen@news-sentinel.com What would you need to survive in your home for a week, maybe two or even a month? Allen County residents are encouraged to think on that and begin gearing up for a potential pandemic flu. Starting today, free pandemic flu preparedness guides are available at area grocery stores and pharmacies. Committees organized by the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health have been meeting for months to develop the guides, which include extensive checklists of recommended nonperishable grocery items, medical supplies and emergency equipment that individuals and families should have on hand. States and counties have been mandated by federal health officials to prepare for a pandemic disease. The one most feared is the H5N1 avian flu virus, which has infected 241 people in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe; 141 of those individuals died. No bird or human cases have been found in the United States to date. Although so far this year only nine new human cases have been reported, the World Health Organization warns slight mutations in H5N1 could allow rapid human-to-human transmission, which has not yet occurred. The H5N1 avian flu strain abroad is similar to the one that caused the 1918 pandemic flu. Also disconcerting is the fact many of the cases of H5N1 that have occurred in the past year in China have occurred in areas with no reported outbreaks in poultry. The first cases in Asia occurred in individuals who had direct contact with infected birds. “The message here is people need to be prepared,” said Dr. Deborah McMahan, Allen County commissioner of health. Residents are encouraged to gather enough food and supplies to last two to four weeks, the period she describes as the most draining on family and community resources should schools and businesses be required to close. “We all need to develop a system for integrating buying groceries and other things to have ample supplies on hand,” McMahan said, recommending people begin now to buy foods on the grocery checklist. With no way of knowing when a major health disaster – or even a natural disaster – will happen, the food items must be checked for expiration dates and used before then. “It’s doable to develop a system to rotate your menu and food with two weeks of nonperishable foods,” McMahan said. For example, buy canned chicken and note the expiration date clearly with a marker. As items are added to the nonperishable food supply, put the more-recently purchased items in back. “Learn the skill of rotating these nonperishables in the daily menu,” she said. Helpful recipes using nonperishable foods are available at www.fighttheflu.org. Expiration dates also must be adhered to when storing medicines on that checklist, said Chad Buhr, district pharmacy manager for SuperValu Pharmacies Inc., which operates pharmacies in Scott’s Foods. Buhr has served on the committee that helped develop the medicine/medical equipment checklist. “If the 56 pharmacies in the area were to close, what would you need to get by?” is the question he and his colleagues posed when developing the checklist. He hopes he never finds out, he said. “The things on the list aren’t anything out of the ordinary,” Buhr said, with many found in the family medicine cabinet. In the event of the avian flu, or even mass cases of a less-virulent winter-flu strain, people who are ill but who do not require respiratory support or other more serious medical intervention will be asked to self-treat at home. The goal is for people to have on hand the items they need to treat flulike symptoms, as well as ample supplies of their prescription drugs. By starting now, families can purchase several bottles of certain over-the-counter drugs such as cold medicines that require a signature and have quantity limits. Also, the cost will be spread out over time. When The News-Sentinel ran the tab for the medicines/medical equipment list, assuming a family had to purchase everything new, the cost was in excess of $100. McMahan said the health department may encourage stores to have an “item of the week” to ensure supplies are adequate and to spread out the cost. Buhr said what pharmacies and grocers want to avoid is the “snow scare” syndrome in which the bread racks and milk coolers are nearly bare within hours of a blizzard forecast. “They won’t be able to do that with this,” Buhr said of a disease outbreak. Things like cough medicine and Pedialyte, a pediatric hydration liquid, are not in as great of supply on a normal day as milk and bread are. Preparedenss is about developing a system now, McMahan said. “It’s about learning to feel comfortable that under dire circumstances, you can eat, feed your kids, hydrate them, keep their fevers down.” Assisting the public to be ready for the worst-case scenario, even if it never happens, is part of the mission of public health, said McMahan, who has spent the past seven days inoculating nearly 4,000 people against hepatitis A. A local pizza restaurant food handler traveled outside the country, got the disease, and potentially infected anyone who ate at the restaurant Aug. 12-19. 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