The Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan for the Health Sector

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Preface

Influenza A viruses periodically cause worldwide epidemics, or pandemics, with high rates of illness and death. Advanced planning for a large scale and widespread health emergency is required to optimize health care delivery during a pandemic. Unlike other public welfare emergencies, an influenza pandemic will impact on multiple communities across Canada simultaneously. Each local jurisdiction must be prepared to respond in the context of uncertain availability of external resources and support. Therefore, contingency planning is required to mitigate the impact of an influenza pandemic through planning and preparation by the co-ordinated efforts of all orders of government in collaboration with their stakeholders.

The overall goal of pandemic influenza preparedness and response is first to minimize serious illness and overall deaths, and second to minimize societal disruption among Canadians as a result of an influenza pandemic.

The Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan for the Health Sector (the Plan) consists of an introduction and a background section, followed by the preparedness, response and recovery sections, which are consistent with the general principals of emergency response. Each section aims to assist and facilitate appropriate planning for the health sector at all levels of government for the next influenza pandemic. The Plan and the annexed guidelines, checklists and other documents were developed to assist all jurisdictions with the main components of health sector planning, including surveillance, vaccine programs, use of antivirals, health services, public health measures and communications. The most effective public health intervention to mitigate the impact of a pandemic is through immunization with an effective vaccine against the novel virus, and, to a lesser extent, through the use of antiviral drugs. In addition, comprehensive planning requires that appropriate surveillance capacity is in place, and that the health sector, emergency services and communities as a whole are informed and equipped to deal with a pandemic.

The Plan is intended to be dynamic and iterative, and will be updated and revised regularly. Since the Plan was first published in 2004, planning has been advancing on multiple fronts. Other sectors have become engaged in developing plans that are envisioned to form a comprehensive set of “nested” plans aimed at not only pandemic influenza planning but also for other public health emergencies. This Plan has a health sector focus and therefore does not fully address emergency response activities and business continuity issues, which would be expected to play an important role in mitigating societal disruption. The Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control (CIDPC), Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), coordinated the development of this edition of the Plan in collaboration with the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response (CEPR), PHAC, with direction from the Pandemic Influenza Committee (PIC).

For this edition, the Plan has been revised to reflect new developments in pandemic influenza preparedness and to ensure consistencies with best practices. The enhanced Plan includes a number of technical updates, revisions and additions. Two new annexes, Public Health Measures and Surveillance have been added and several others have been updated. For those annexes that have not been updated, a note has been added on the cover page explaining that the content of the annex may not reflect the latest information on antivirals or the latest WHO phase terminology.

This Plan has a national scope and is intended to provide planning guidance and a record of nationally agreed upon approaches to many of the components necessary for a comprehensive response. Operational details regarding implementation of the response have not been addressed in this plan as it would be more appropriate for that level of detail to be included in each jurisdiction's plan.

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