Bird flu would swamp hospitals
U.S. worst case? 2 million dead, no room for sickest
Health care providers from around the nation said Tuesday that hospitals are woefully unprepared for a bird flu outbreak and likely would be overwhelmed by a pandemic.
Their frustration flared as the top federal health official warned that the U.S. government wouldn’t be able to assist everyone in the event of widespread infection.
“Any community that fails to prepare with the expectation that the federal government or, for that matter, the state government will be able to step forward and come to their rescue at the final hour will be tragically wrong,” Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said at a conference on emergency preparedness.
W. Frank Peacock, chairman of emergency preparedness at the Cleveland Clinic, said the nation’s hospitals can barely handle the surge in patients when the seasonal flu strikes. “The problem is we are just good enough for what happens now,” he said.