Coordinating the International Emergency Response to Influenza A(h1n1) by Combining Social Networking and Traditional Media
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Abstract
On April 24th 2009 the World Health Organization (WHO) announced an outbreak of Influenza A (H1N1) in both the United States and Mexico. Laboratory confirmation of a virus that had not been previously detected in either humans or pigs immediately raised questions as to its severity, potential for spread and the availability of vaccines or treatment. Mounting a rapid and effective response required collaboration among countries and input from a wide range of disciplinary experts. As the regional office for WHO in the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) used web conferencing to facilitate real-time communication among the key players, combined with interpretation to overcome language barriers and phone lines for those without ready internet access.
One of the challenges was to facilitate virtual meetings among the Ministers of Health throughout the Americas region (the Caribbean, North, Central and South America) so the Ministers could hear first-hand from their counterparts in affected countries in order to formulate their national response. PAHO/WHO already had an installed base for web conferencing at its headquarters in Washington DC and in all of the 35 Member Countries which was used by most of the Ministers, however, some of them asked to participate by phone.
Three virtual meeting rooms and three phone lines (one for each of English, French and Spanish) were set up in a physical meeting room. Each phone line was connected to the virtual meeting room of the same language through an internal bridge. All participants could speak in and listen to the language of their choice. Just as in a traditional multi-lingual meeting, the sound was piped into small booths for the interpreters to hear. The interpreters spoke into a microphone that was connected to the appropriate virtual meeting room (and phone line). A similar configuration was used for meetings of technical experts (eg. epidemiologists, emergency operations centers) and to hold press conferences with the media in both English and Spanish. Issues raised and frequently asked questions from all forums formed basis for future action and development of educational materials, including an online course on Influenza A (H1N1).
The web became the central repository for daily updates of official data (countries affected, number of cases and deaths, etc.), technical documents and video-recordings of press conferences and interviews. Web traffic increased by a factor of over 600%. Daily reports, epidemiologic reports and press releases were fed into RSS feeds and Twitter. Press conferences were available on YouTube.
This was an unprecedented use of social networking to link the global community (governments, press, academia, NGOs, health workers, laboratories, the general population, UN and other international agencies) in multiple ways and languages to respond to an emergency. The use of social networking should be an integral part of emergency preparedness planning.
One of the challenges was to facilitate virtual meetings among the Ministers of Health throughout the Americas region (the Caribbean, North, Central and South America) so the Ministers could hear first-hand from their counterparts in affected countries in order to formulate their national response. PAHO/WHO already had an installed base for web conferencing at its headquarters in Washington DC and in all of the 35 Member Countries which was used by most of the Ministers, however, some of them asked to participate by phone.
Three virtual meeting rooms and three phone lines (one for each of English, French and Spanish) were set up in a physical meeting room. Each phone line was connected to the virtual meeting room of the same language through an internal bridge. All participants could speak in and listen to the language of their choice. Just as in a traditional multi-lingual meeting, the sound was piped into small booths for the interpreters to hear. The interpreters spoke into a microphone that was connected to the appropriate virtual meeting room (and phone line). A similar configuration was used for meetings of technical experts (eg. epidemiologists, emergency operations centers) and to hold press conferences with the media in both English and Spanish. Issues raised and frequently asked questions from all forums formed basis for future action and development of educational materials, including an online course on Influenza A (H1N1).
The web became the central repository for daily updates of official data (countries affected, number of cases and deaths, etc.), technical documents and video-recordings of press conferences and interviews. Web traffic increased by a factor of over 600%. Daily reports, epidemiologic reports and press releases were fed into RSS feeds and Twitter. Press conferences were available on YouTube.
This was an unprecedented use of social networking to link the global community (governments, press, academia, NGOs, health workers, laboratories, the general population, UN and other international agencies) in multiple ways and languages to respond to an emergency. The use of social networking should be an integral part of emergency preparedness planning.
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