Public Employee Press

No city procedure on swine flu outbreak

The state’s first swine flu death was a New York City employee — Assistant Principal Mitchell Wiener — but the city Health Dept. has refused to issue guidelines to protect municipal workers who have to interact with the public during the current outbreak.

Despite prodding by the union, the Dept. of Health has given out only public health guidelines in the form of questions and answers that do not address enough of the issues facing city workers, said DC 37 Safety and Health Director Lee Clarke.

The union is asking the city DOH to assess the hazards facing various occupational groups, including employees who are at greater risk of infection, such as those at the Health and Hospitals Corp. and the departments of Education, Health, Juvenile Justice and Corrections.

According to Clarke, city guidelines should tell at-risk employees how to prevent contamination, what to do if they are infected and where to report health information, as well as whether protective equipment is required, how to minimize exposure risks without disrupting work and how to operate with a reduced workforce.

Government issues heads up

“Our frontline health-care workers are the foundation of our health-care system,” federal safety official Jordan Barab told a congressional hearing. “If they cannot work due to illness, or are unwilling to work due to fears for their health, individual patients and the country’s entire health-care structure will suffer.”

Dr. Anne Schuchat of the federal Centers for Disease Control said the fight against swine flu — now called H1N1 — “will be a marathon, not a sprint. Even if this outbreak yet proves to be less serious than we might have originally feared, we can anticipate a follow-on outbreak several months down the road.”

The state Dept. of Labor issued a memo on the H1N1 flu telling job safety and health professionals how to address the needs of the workforce as they interact with the public. The DOL memo included guidelines established in 2007 by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic. These are available at http://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3327pandemic.pdf. A fact sheet on H1N1 is available on the DC 37 Web site at www.dc37.net.