There was a time when Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm superintendent Joe Schmidt would look upon the wide blue sky that soars above his 120-offender minimum security facility and be at peace. After all, like most transition programs, PMCF does good work. It helps AKDOC inmates return to their community by providing vital skills through industrial, agricultural, and technological enterprises.

The work on the 100-plus acre farm, which includes cultivating 45 acres of potatoes and 12 acres of vegetables, feeds members of Schmidt's facility as well as others across Alaska. So do the 3,700 chickens and turkeys that live on the same grounds.

Lately, this is what bothers him about that tranquil sky. As another change of season approaches this might be the year it fills with a highly predictable yet unstable and, for now, unstoppable force that could wipe out his flocks, and worse, an entire Anchorage population that lives just 43 miles south of his facility.

About 4,000 miles southeast of PMCF, in Tallahassee, FL, Scott McPherson is troubled by the same ideas, but his worries are of a broader scale that spans the United States.

“It's not about if it will happen. It's about when,” he says.

McPherson's job at the Florida DOC is two-fold. He serves as its chief information officer and heads its pandemic task force. He is well-versed in preparing for disasters – he ran the statewide Y2K project for Jeb Bush in 1999 – so he knows a thing or two about proper preparation procedures or in many facilities' cases the lack thereof.

“We've got a duty to prepare for the probability of a pandemic. What the public health folks are telling us is the best candidate for the next pandemic is A/H5N1. That's the bird flu or the avian flu,” he explains.

The “A” defines the type of influenza virus. In this case, the A virus causes avian influenza, which is hosted by birds but may infect several species of mammals. The H5 and N1 define the strain's composition.

Until recently, H5/N1 was transmitted from migratory birds to other fowl. In the past nine years, though, there have been cases where humans have contracted avian flu. In 1997, six of the 18 people in Hong Kong that contracted the flu died, and 1.4 million birds were destroyed as a result. In 2003, 125 human cases were discovered in Asia, with 64 fatalities. Just a year ago, Russia, Turkey and Romania have all reported cases of H5/N1.
But recent evidence suggests a more startling statistic. The World Health Organization has said that while humans initially caught avian flu strictly from birds, it found that human to human transmission has occurred.

“So, now we've seen that a human caught the avian flu from a bird, but then transmitted it to another human, who then transmitted it to someone else,” McPherson explains. “We're seeing people catch the bird flu when people shouldn't be catching the flu at all. What worries health experts now is that if someone gets this flu on top of the normal flu that goes around during the flu season, more people will catch both.”

This is why H5/N1virus could slowly become a pandemic, first for poultry the world over and soon enough for humans. Avian flu has not yet hit North and South America, but McPherson thinks its arrival is imminent. Once that happens, there is great risk that migratory birds using North American flight patterns would infect our country's poultry.

“And as a nation we're behind in preparing for this. Corrections may actually be slightly ahead of other agencies, or at least as ready as law enforcement agencies are. As we've seen now for other natural disasters what the government can do to help us is limited. We need to prepare ourselves by ourselves for this,” he says.

So, Schmidt watches the skies and thinks about the swans, geese, and sandhill cranes and hundreds of thousands of other migratory birds that will soon fly above his facility and fields, and poultry.

He feels prepared, though, for what may come. He's well aware of the impact one sick bird could have on the 600 poultry the PMCF processes a month to feed inmates and practitioners. So, when he saw the wild birds that left from Russia and Asia to settle into his barley fields in early spring, he decided to call his veterinarian. He needed to know now what his inmates and staff had to do if they ever found one or more dead birds.

“The state vet came out to train our safety officers and showed them how to perform a group of early detection tests. We also talked to the inmates about finding dead birds and telling us what they see. If we find three or more dead wild birds, we're to contact the vet. If early detection tests turn positive they'll get sent out of state for more testing. Then there's a possibility the Feds would come in and wipe out our flock,” Schmidt explains.

“We haven't found anything, yet,” he says hesitantly.

“If you're a chicken you're scared,” McPherson adds. “Migratory birds with H5/N1 evacuate it through their bowels. If this happens where domestic poultry lives, they'll get it. No doubt, migratory wild fowl are pushing this disease along. Eventually we're going to have an outbreak of bird flu among poultry in the US.”

Poultry processing manufacturers, like industry giant Tyson, which controls almost 27 percent of U.S. poultry sales – one out of every four pounds of chicken, beef and pork consumed in the U.S. is a Tyson product - share McPherson's sentiment. In fact, vehicles must first be sprayed with disinfectants before entering any Tyson site.

Schmidt doesn't see the need for that extreme just yet but he has instituted health procedures to curb the risk of infection.

“We broke up the birds and now keep them in separate rooms with solid walls between them. If we did have an infection, we could separate the flock and try to keep the healthy ones if protocol would allow that,” he explains.

The vet brought safety gear like gloves and goggles to use when handling the birds. Schmidt introduced a bleach mat and towel so inmates and officials can wipe their feet to keep fecal matter out of the facility and other bird pens.

“We put the birds in our greenhouses during the migratory periods of the winter and summer. It was wonderful protection, but it was a bit too warm. Humidity and chickens don't do so well together,” he explains, “so we'll probably keep all the birds in our barns instead and install heaters for them in the winter. The turkeys we also kept inside a month longer than we usually do.”

Any corrections facility that has an agriculture program should already be working with their state and federal agriculture departments. Facilities need to know how to protect their stock, and must immediately adopt and rehearse disinfectant procedures. This includes monitoring daily the health of their flocks.

“All it takes is one dead bird to infect poultry and all heck could break loose in our country,” says McPherson. “It's at that point we're going to see runs on masks and hand sanitizer. By then, it might be too late or too tough to get gloves and gowns, and tools needed to manage the pandemic. Demand could make those items cost a lot more than they do today too.” 

Institutions should ensure they have at least a four month's supply of the proper gowns, gloves and masks. They should also have additional water and food supplies. Practitioners should find inmates with health care experience, those who can be nurse assistants, the ones who have performed battlefield triage.

“We feel very strongly that corrections agencies need to get in touch with their state health departments today and find out where they stand for anti-virals and vaccines,” McPherson stresses. “The federal plan is to ship anti-virals to doctors and nurses, EMTs, firemen, policemen, and other law enforcement, and then start treating the general population. What we're seeing is that corrections is frequently not taken into account for drug rationing.”

Add to this, society's standard practice of “just-in-time” ordering, and those who wait could find themselves short of vital supplies. States and counties are looking to supply their police and sheriff's offices, but this could lead to a deadly assumption that corrections will be cared for somewhere else.

“Face to face discussions with the state health department will be the only way to properly plan for this and ensure that corrections is covered,” adds McPherson.

Earlier last month, he recently met with health officials to decipher what his facility will get, including additional funds and Tamiflu, which contains oseltamivir phosphate, a drug that that has been known to help prevent certain types of flu.

McPherson says officials need to consider how a facility-wide illness would impact manpower. If about 30 to 40 percent of COs cannot or will not show for work to care for themselves or sick family members, who will care for the inmates? Legal implications could also follow. Will inmates sue for the right to get anti-viral medications?

Questions like these may not have steadfast answers, but addressing them as a pandemic hits won't solve any problems either.

“No one wants to say that there will be a pandemic, but we can't avoid its possibility, and we definitely need to prepare for it,” he adds.

The good news, if there can be any about social catastrophes, is that pandemic preparedness can be leveraged against any disaster. The same procedures and processes set in place now will only help in the event of other possible disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes and bioterrorism. There is never a downside to the planning effort.

Bottom Line: Disaster preparedness must be implemented, especially when potential pandemics, like the avian flu, have already been proven to be spreading steadily around the world.

Email Scott McPherson or call him at 850.410.4740 to talk with him about his strategies and presentation on pandemic preparedness.

Other resources: PandemicFlu.gov offers updates and explanations for avian and pandemic flu information.