The health service will be plunged into chaos if Britain is struck by a bird flu pandemic, a Government report warns.| Not that you'll be able to tell ... |
The draft document for Primary Care Trusts, which will have responsibility for co-ordinating a response to any flu pandemic, also predicts demand for the NHS Direct hotline would soar from 170,000 calls a week to almost four million, swamping the system.
The study, released without publicity on the internet, details how ministers plan to cope by setting up a "national flu hotline" and ordering those with symptoms to stay at home. Flu assessments would be carried out by call centre workers, who would decide whether a patient needed treatment with one of the 14.6 million doses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu which the Government will have stockpiled by next month.
For children under seven and "at risk" groups, such as those with existing lung conditions, a general practitioner or a nurse might assess the patient before giving Tamiflu.
Patients would be expected to nominate a relative or friend who will be given a password and security number in order to pick up supplies. Those who have no one to nominate will have Tamiflu delivered.
In the "peak week", the report says, 4.5 million cases will emerge. Of those, four per cent would need hospital care, requiring 166,000 beds. About 54,000 victims would need intensive care.
However, the entire National Health Service has only 159,600 beds available each week, including just 3,900 ITU beds. The death rate from any pandemic is estimated at 2.5 per cent - 525,000 people. The Home Office has already warned that families might have to wait up to four months to bury their dead and that mass graves could be used.
Dr Martin Shalley, the president of the British Association of Accident and Emergency Medicine, said: "The first time we saw these figures our mouths fell open. It is every doctor's worst nightmare. There are plans in place, but there is the potential for meltdown.
"It is obvious that no hospital is going to have the capacity to cope with anything like this and a huge percentage of health care workers are going to get sick. Hospitals will be inundated with huge numbers of patients and doctors will have to make some difficult judgements."
A Department of Health spokesman said: "It is likely that NHS services will be under significant pressure during a pandemic and that is why we are also asking the NHS to develop local plans."
Scientists believe it is only a matter of time before the H5N1 strain of avian flu mutates into a form that can spread from person to person, creating a pandemic. Experts working for the Department of Health based their estimates on the outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918. They predict a 35 per cent "attack rate", meaning 21 million people will contract the virus at some point during the pandemic, which may last four months.
By last week, 141 people had been killed by the virus since 2003. Its presence has been confirmed in more than 48 countries and territories, including Britain, where a dead swan was found floating in the harbour of the coastal village of Cellardyke, in Fife, on April 6. The bird later tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian flu.