For healthcare organizations who fight against swine flu (recently renamed H1N1), it is a delicate balance: Be honest and clear without triggering panic. Officials of the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its European counterpart, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), seeking to strike the right tone, a challenge to all the more difficult by a sudden attack of media inquiries that threaten to overwhelm their systems.
The agencies manage by running information sessions in the daily press (during which they inevitably are less questions that journalists ask), the establishment of hot lines media, and work late at night to accommodate different time zones. They beefing staff and based on the training they received in the "outbreak communications."
In 04, WHO began to reconsider the way it has shared information about pandemics with the public, and the following year he published his five "principles of epidemics," based in part on lessons learned from SARS. "We struggled with SARS [and] we did not have a lot of risk communication resources or training to call," said Dick Thompson, who joined the WHO communications office in 01 after 23 years as a journalist Time magazine.
Since then, WHO has begun trust focusing, the first announcement, and transparency. "We trained representatives of more than 0 health departments and dozens of journalists" in these principles, says Thompson, now a consultant who heads the WHO media response to H1N1. "Quite often, countries are reluctant to say anything" about a disease outbreak, and when they do, they "overreassure." But really, he said, "you need to announce early: People are sick, people are dying you should talk" Sometimes transparency means that you have no idea what will happen-as.. servants, soothing voices generally have repeated again and again in briefings to the media this week.
CDC, meanwhile, added 50 new people to staff its information line where waiting 15 minutes for calls to the public to respond now to about 0 seconds. the agency receives 4,000 calls a public day and more than 2,000 e-mails, said Richard Besser, acting director of the centers Americans for disease control and prevention, in a press conference. the agency is "out there twitting well. I've never tweeted" before, Besser said.
ECDC, which was formed in 05, was used to make three or four calls a day journalists; now he is fielding hundreds. To make things more chaotic, H1N1 "started the weekend that crises always do," said Ben Duncan, a spokesman for the ECDC which was out skiing at the time. His "system early warning "consisted of media calls on his cell phone.
To handle the influx, ECDC began daily briefings earlier this week, which come after a "rehearsal" with scientists and officials that older journalists could ask, Granatt said Michael, who was director general of government information services in the UK and is now a consultant for ECDC communication operations. "These guys look at each other" talk to the press and the public, he said. "They now understand that they have to speak in relatively plain language" agree with each other to reduce fear, and especially "working on" Who is the man in the street will think of that? "
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