Preparing For the Swine Influenza
Monday, April 27, 2009 at 10:45AM 
We are all concerned about the spread of the swine influenze and nervously await its arrival in Georgia. Below is an excerpt of Dr. Richard Besser's, Acting Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, remarks from the press briefing held April 26 on what we can do to prepare ourselves.
"It's important that people understand that there's a role for everyone to play when there's an outbreak going on. There are things that individuals do, there's things that families do, communities do to try and reduce the impact. At the individual level, it's important people understand how they can prevent respiratory infections. Very frequent hand-washing is something that we talk about time and time again and that is an effective way to reduce transmission of disease. If you're sick, it's very important that people stay at home. If your children are sick, have a fever and flu-like illness, they shouldn't go to school. And if you're ill, you shouldn't get on an airplane or another public transport to travel. Those things are part of personal responsibility in trying to reduce the impact.
So it's time for people to be thinking — forward-thinking about, well, if it were my child's school, what would I do, how would I be prepared for that kind of an event. We view the public as partners in the efforts to try and control what's going on.
There are a number of sources of information. I want people to know that the CDC web site — www.cdc.gov — has our latest information on swine flu. There's a link from there to very current information and there's a link there to a Spanish language site as well."
Read the entire transcript of the press briefing
Icela Reets - Emergency Response Program Coordinator
