“Doctor, doctor I think I’ve got
swine flu!”
“Well dear patient, would you mind
calling back in 12 months?”
Ok, it’s not very funny. In fact it’s so unfunny it could have made it
onto the recent Corden-Horne comedic televisual programmes. (I use the
terms loosely).
But as you may have read recently, it’s not far from the truth because
the national flu line service set up to handle millions of calls in the
event of health pandemic is a year behind schedule.
Normally you’d hire a couple Polish guys to work the weekend and get the
programme back on track but this one’s a bit more involved.
According to a
report by James Sturcke of the Guardian, when the World Health
Organisation reached pandemic level five, the service was supposed to
get underway, with 7,500 centres dealing with calls from 20,000 people
at a time and at least 6 million people a day at the height of the
disease. Instead, right now a recorded phone line is in place with
people who believe they have swine flu symptoms being told to call NHS
Direct – that’s 3,500 staff in 35 call centres.
Added to this, the Department of Health findings suggest that GP
practices could not collectively expand their call handling capacity
enough to address the expected level of demand.
The health minister Lord Darzi had earlier this week told the House of
Lords that the flu line was due to be ready by autumn (this year
hopefully, although he didn’t specify). The Department of Health added
that it was “too risky” to introduce the system until it had been fully
tested.
However, I think to a lot of people think that this swine flu is pretty
risky too.
The failure to get the flu line up-and-running (fluid?) has raised
concerns that there will be delays in getting antiviral drugs to
patients should cases start to grow exponentially, with fears that
people may be able to fraudulently secure many doses of Tamiflu.
A senior emergency planning source claims “Without the flu line there is
nothing to stop you or me getting multiple doses from multiple places”.
So where do CTL Europe fit in here?
Well, we’re on standby if your organisation gets blitzed by calls from
concerned customers or the public in general. Multilingual, multichannel
and 24/7 – we’re here to help. It’s for times like this that we have the
SmartInform
communication tool, to ensure you’re ready even if flu line isn’t.”
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