Brunei Prepare For The Worst

Improves Disaster Response

Bandar Seri Begawan - As The H1N1 death toll and infections continue to rise in Malaysia, Thailand and lately in India, Brunei is taking every step to prepare for the worst.

To enhance the government agencies in preparing for pandemic disaster, a one-day workshop on Business Continuity Plan was organised by the National Disaster Management Centre yesterday.

Awang Yahya bin Hi Abd Rahman, Director of Fire and Rescue Department who is also the Director of National Disaster Management Centre, opened the workshop saying, "This workshop is the first of its kind and its objective is to enhance various government agencies' preparedness in time of disaster.

"As we all know, we are continuously confronted with challenges to sustain our core functions to handle unknown threats of pandemic influenza, natural disasters, climate changes or internal system failure.

"If we look back at the number of disasters that Brunei has faced, it shows an increasing trend. For example in 2007, we were confronted with strong winds and flood, in 2008 we had flood, strong winds and also landslides, but this year we are faced with a pandemic and haze apart from landslides, flood and fires.

"It is critical for us to learn about business continuity plan (BCP) or business continuity management in order to minimise the impact of the threats especially in our essential services and sustain our core business.

"The BCP was recommended to be undertaken during the 2nd Asean technical working group pandemic preparedness and response meeting in Bangkok this year. This was further highlighted during the national disaster council meeting in preparation of HIM pandemic effect," said Awg Yahya.

Dr Ingo Neu, Senior planning officer of UNOCHA Regional Office for Asia & Pacific, delivered the workshop along with Dr Goh Moh Heng, President of Business Continuity Management institute, Singapore.

Dr Ingo Neu in his presentation on the potential impacts of the pandemic on society, economy and different sectors highlighted the danger of three types of influenza A.

"The seasonal influenza causes viral respiratory infection in humans that kills about 500,000 people globally each year. The Avian Influenza, which spreads from birds to birds, the H5N1 strain is highly lethal among poultry and can sometimes infect humans. The current Influenza A H1N1 is reported in 60 countries.

"We must not forget about the lethal H5N1 virus. While we have one pandemic, we can't say we won't get another pandemic. And H5N1 would be more severe in terms of fatalities," he said.

There is currently no vaccine available and antibiotics cannot be used to treat viral infections. The use of antiviral can make illness milder and recovery faster. For treatment, antiviral drugs work best if started soon after getting sick (within two days). In Thailand, it was found that maybe half of the fatal cases were due to slow treatment, he added.

Ina multi-sectoral preparedness, he said, "The health sector needs to provide leadership and guidance and take action to reduce health consequences as well as to raise awareness about the risk and potential health consequences."

In the non-health sector, there is a need to develop guidelines and implement activities to minimise the effect of a pandemic. The communities have to take action to minimise the adverse effects of a pandemic among individuals and families.

Dr Ingo Neu also showed a chart on the direct and indirect effects of a pandemic whereby the direct effect is sickness, death and massive demands on the health system, while indirectly the pandemic can cause widespread absenteeism, reduce or increase demand of certain services, cut in supplies and disruption of services.

The biggest of all impacts is absence from work as widespread absenteeism can cripple the country and economy.

-- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

With Love: Amirul010