Professionals stay calm as alert unfolds

Dr Julia Peters has spent most of the past week on the phone, on TV and in crisis- management meetings. Photo / Martin Sykes

Julia Peters might be expected to look exhausted, or at least a little frazzled, after a week at the forefront of a national health alert.

But yesterday, the clinical director of the Auckland Regional Public Health Service looked calm as she explained how her team of 300 health workers had worked to try to stop the spread of swine flu.

Since the news of the Rangitoto College swine flu scare broke on Sunday night, Dr Peters has spent most of the past week on the phone, on television and in crisis-management meetings.

On Thursday she had her first decent sleep.

But she insists it is not just one very efficient lady who has missed out on family time and sleep.

"We've had a lot of people in here working very hard since Saturday afternoon ... there aren't unlimited resources and there have been almost limitless tasks to be done," she said.

Dr Peters did not know about the seriousness of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico until midday last Saturday when she took a call from an on-call doctor and headed into work.

One of the Rangitoto College teachers who knew about the swine flu was concerned a few of the students seemed sick and advised them to see their doctors.

Those doctors were also worried and called an on-call doctor from public health, who called Dr Peters.

A few phone calls later and six public health staff gathered around a table to assess the data from the doctors. They realised they would have to call the Rangitoto College families and send public health nurses to take swabs.

"From the moment we heard about the situation in Mexico, we treated it very seriously as though that was what it was going to be," Dr Peters said.

Eight public health nurses were called in to work into the night, and the next day the group reconvened.

At 5pm on Sunday, when it was confirmed the sick students had influenza A, an operations centre was set up.

Dr Peters said the team slipped into what is called a "co-ordinated incident management structure".

They had practised a public health crisis response before the Ministry of Health had run faux flu epidemic and border screening operations.

"We have all practised for this scenario, but there's nothing like the real thing to give you an idea of the scale of how it could be," Dr Peters said.