The Government presented today, in Angra do Heroísmo, the Contingency Plan of the Azores for the Influenza Pandemia - Health Sector, a strategic and operational instrument meant for guaranteeing to the Region capacity of detection and answer in case of a phenomenon of this nature.

The secretary for Social Affairs explained that the plan suits “three great principles” - the geographical discontinuity, the existent infrastructures in each one of the islands and the demographic disproportion -, adding that the Executive opted for the “more rational, predictable and practical way” of potentiating and improving the capacity of doing face to a situation of pandemia.

“The threat of a influenza pandemia constitutes an important preoccupation, common to all the countries, regions and institutions, and its possible consequences, its impact in the lethality and social dysfunction are, equally, a collective and intersectorial responsibility”, he thought.

The plan presented today stems from a work begun in 2006, in collaboration with the General Directorate for Health and with several sectors of the Azorean society and health units of the Regional Health Service (SRS), having been nominated, for the effect, an operational nucleus and a mixed commission for the attendance, prevention and combat to the propagation of the virus and to the influenza pandemia.

The objective, already at the time, explained the regional secretary for social affairs, was of turning the sceneries on the influenza pandemia “into opportunities of innovation”.

Distribution of the number of cases of influenza, consultations, hospitalizations and deaths according to different levels of impact of the influenza pandemia are some of the data and indicators that the plan allows to make calculations, according to parameters of the National Health Observatory (ONSA).

Managed by the Regional Directorate for Health (DRS), the instrument establishes a chain of command at the regional level, at the level of the health authority of island and also of council, foreseeing the creation, in case of influenza pandemia, places predicted for the cases confirmed through laboratorial diagnosis in the hospitals, health centres, private clinic or others.

The plan still points to the creation of an office of communication of threat and influenza to prepare, to elaborate and to manage the information by the press and by the populations.

According to direction of the Ministry of Health, it was attributed to the Region a fraction of the national reserve of medicines proportional to the Azorean population, expressed in 0,11 percent, extolling the regional plan an increase of this reserve in which it concerns to medicine in capsules, being the pandemic formula, in powder, only sent to the archipelago after declaration of pandemia.

Fitted in the National Contingency Plan for the Influenza Pandemia and in articulation with the Dr. Ricardo Jorge National Health Laboratory, the project of the DRS integrates both Azorean laboratories - Molecular Pathology and Genetics Unit of the Divino Espírito Santo Hospital of Ponta Delgada and the Specialized Service of Epidemiology and Molecular Biology of the Santo Espírito Hospital of Angra do Heroísmo.