GLOVERSVILLE - Nathan Littauer Hospital has developed a plan intended to help educate the public about swine flu and has strategically planned ways it will treat those at risk for the virus, hospital officials said at a news conference Thursday.
Hospital officials said they wanted to ensure people have access to accurate information regarding the disease. Vice President of Development Susan Kiernan said there are plenty of rumors swirling around that make people worry about the disease more than they necessarily should. Swine flu, she said, has, for the most part, not affected upstate New York in a large-scale fashion.
"The fear of the swine flu really is lack of information," Vice President of Development Susan Kiernan said. "So we are trying our best to get all our information out to our primary care patients."
Kiernan said swine flu vaccines likely would arrive in the county for use toward the middle of October-she said there have been reports that there are 100,000 doses of the vaccine currently in New York state, ready to be deployed. Once they arrive, the hospital will vaccinate all its employees, and will call its patients who are considered at high-risk for the virus to ask if they want the vaccination.
Those high-risk patients include health care and emergency personnel, pregnant women, people ages 6 to 24 and people ages 25 to 64 who are at risk of acquiring the flu. Elderly patients are mostly immune to the disease.
Primary Care Service Vice President Patrice McMahon said vaccination clinics likely will be set up at one or two central primary care sites in the area.
Hospital officials encouraged those who feel they might have the virus to come to the hospital's primary care center toward the end of the day so they do not spread the disease to others. They also said they would not be administering flu tests to people on a regular basis.
"We really want to avoid people coming to the emergency department because they don't feel well and they want a flu test," Chief of Emergency Medicine Dr. Todd Duthaler said. "That's really not what we're doing this flu season."
Duthaler said the hospital would require people who come to the emergency room feeling feverish to wear masks inside the building. The hospital will put people who are feeling sick on five days of anti-viral medication, and will treat high risk patients who fear they might be exposed to the disease from a family member, for example, or a friend with a preventative, "prophylactic" treatment that is intended to keep them temporarily healthy.
The prophylactic treatment, however, is not a long term solution to the problem, since the person could still get the disease elsewhere at a later date.
In an attempt to provide the public with more information, the hospital has set up a hotline at 773-5399 that will be updated with the most recent information from the Center for Disease Control and the state Department of Health regarding the flu.
The hospital also has scheduled four information sessions on the disease. Three of those sessions will happen at the Johnstown Holiday Inn Tuesday at 3, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., and one will be at the Perth Primary Care center Oct. 15 at 6:30 p.m. There also may be future information sessions at Littauer's Mayfield and Speculator primary care centers.
Zach Subar covers rural Fulton County news. He can be reached at ruralnews@leaderherald.com.
