Faith Groups Will Have "No Excuse" For Not Being Prepared When Next Pandemic Hits

Need for preparation and planning underscored at first-ever Faith Community Summit on Pandemic Preparedness at CMU

Note: This article was written in 2007, following the first-ever Faith Community Summit on pandemic preparedness in Canada. Today, with growing fears about the H1N1 flu pandemic, the findings are more applicable than ever.

When the next flu pandemic strikes, the very first people to get anti-virals—drugs like Tamiflu that can prevent the illness—should be clergy.

That's what Dr. Joel Kettner, Chief Medical Officer for the Province of Manitoba, told 87 participants at the June 20-21 Faith Community Summit on Pandemic Preparedness at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg.

Kettner was joking—sort of. But he was also trying to make the serious point that, during a pandemic, "we will need people to keep us calm and help us not to panic." Clergy, he said, will be counted on to help perform that role.

The important role that faith groups will play during a future pandemic was underscored repeatedly during the event—the first-ever of its kind in Canada—which brought together healthcare experts, government officials and faith community leaders from across the country to talk about the role faith groups will play during a major health emergency. At the same time, it underscored the need for faith groups to start planning for a pandemic now.

The Sars Experience
What will happen when a pandemic hits? Summit participants received a glimpse of what it might look like from Lt. Colonel Irene Stickland, Vice President and Deputy CEO of Scarborough Grace Hospital in 2003—ground zero in Ontario during that year's SARS outbreak.

Life at her hospital was normal, she said, until one Friday afternoon when a man just back from a visit to China walked into her emergency department, complaining about a serious respiratory problem.

"A virulent pathogen had travelled halfway around the world and landed in my hospital," she said.

They got through the outbreak due to a combination of "serendipity and smarts," she said, adding that "those were very difficult days." She described how hospital staff became ill, how people worried about the unknown disease in their midst, and how people struggled to cope.

Altogether, over 100 of her staff contracted SARS, and everyone lived in fear of bringing it home to their families. "Some family members got it," she noted.

"For three months we all wore masks and gowns," she said, noting that "we all remember how difficult it was in the masks, how we couldn't breathe, how we worried the masks might not work."

To illustrate her point, she had three volunteers from the audience sit on the platform beside her during her speech, dressed in gowns, gloves and mask. They later spoke about how they felt hot, suffocated and claustrophobic—and they were just sitting, not moving around and trying to work.

But despite the fear and discomfort, the staff was driven by "a desire to care," she said, adding that faith groups will need this same "divine imperative to love and care" when a pandemic strikes.

Unlike with SARS, which caught people by surprise, faith groups can prepare now for a pandemic, she said, by educating themselves about the issue; organizing in advance so they are ready to spring into action when it hits; forming partnerships with other groups and government agencies to maximize the effect of their response; building teams that can work together during a crisis; identifying leaders who will take charge; and creating a volunteer network.

In particular, she suggested that faith groups need to develop communication plans to get information down to the congregational levels, and that congregations need to "plan ways they will help the sick in their congregations, and the elderly, people living alone."

These people, she said, will need to have medicine and good delivered, but will also need phone calls, letters, e-mails and other forms of support.

When a pandemic strikes, "we will have no excuse," she said. "We need to be prepared. The needs of the community will be great, the opportunities for faith-based groups will be many."

When, Not If, a Pandemic Comes
The inevitability of another pandemic, and the need for preparation, were twin themes that ran through the Summit.

During a presentation entitled Pandemic 101, Larry Bredensen, Regional Coordinator for Emergency Preparedness and Response for the Public Health Agency of Canada, provided an overview of what the future will bring.

"We absolutely do know there will be another pandemic," he stated. "We just don't know when, where or what the virus will be."

Bredensen added that "we cannot count on vaccines to protect us," noting that it takes between four to six months to "bring the appropriate vaccine on line" once the virus is identified.

He went on to say that there have been three pandemics since the turn of the 20th century: The Spanish Flu in 1918-20, which killed between 20 to 40 million people; the Asian Flu in 1957, which killed one to two million; and the Hong Kong Flu in 1968, which killed about 700,000 to one million. So far, 12 countries have had human cases of the most recent Avian flu, and 191 people have died.

What makes a flu pandemic so virulent, he noted, is victims tend not to be bed-ridden once they become ill, but will continue to "move around, go on vacation, go to work and go to church, even though they are sick."

Adding to the problem is that people travel so much, and the world is very urbanized. "You can get anywhere in the world in 24 hours," Bredensen observed, adding that together with our "higher density" living, viruses can be spread very quickly.

In addition to the health effects of pandemic flu, society would be greatly disrupted by the illness he said, noting that stores today depend on "just in time" delivery of everything from groceries to medicine. If truckers get sick in large numbers, or there are increased border delays, consumers might not be able to get food and drugs, he noted.

Faith groups, like other sectors of society, "have a duty to act—morally, ethically and legally," he said, adding that "we can delay it [the pandemic]," by doing things like hand washing or staying home from work, church and social events when sick. "But we cannot stop it . . . the pandemic clock is ticking."

Making Connections
During his presentation Kettner emphasized that people most at risk in a pandemic will be "those individuals who don't have support networks . . . who's going to look out for them?"

He went on to say that vaccines are not the key to overcoming a pandemic. "The key is building relationships . . . it's something we re-learn after each emergency."

Kettner noted that the people who suffered most during Hurricane Katrina "didn't have connections . . . it's not just that they didn't have a car [to escape New Orleans], they didn't have connections to someone who had a car."

The most important relationships occur in daily settings, he added, like in a faith community, and that faith groups can play an important role by making sure people connected to sources of assistance during an emergency.

During a pandemic, "we will all have a role to play, to help each other," he concluded.

Duty to Care
But what if some people in the faith community don't want to help the sick? That was the issue addressed by Reverend Douglas Graydon of the Anglican Church of Canada.

During the SARS crisis in Toronto, he noted that some clergy were unwilling to go back to the affected hospitals after the quarantine was lifted. "They said they had not been called to put themselves at risk," he said, adding that 16 Anglican clergy had to be quarantined during the emergency.

The experience taught the Anglican Church the "value of preparedness," he said, noting that it had "unclear policies and procedures" for what to do in that kind of crisis.

It also prompted a discussion about how the concept of the "duty to care" applies to clergy during a health emergency like a pandemic. "Can we assume that pastors will be there [during a pandemic][?" he asked, noting that some clergy feared bringing the virus home to their families.

Anglicans, he said, are dealing with the issue by "developing scenarios to help us think about what we will do." The Church is also going back to its history, he said, to see how it responded to emergencies in the past. "We're re-telling our story . . . as a faith community, we have been here before."

At the same time, the Anglican Church is examining its sick day policies, their dependence on weekly offerings and wants to appoint a pandemic coordinator in each diocese.

The Church is also working on its "relationships with public health agencies," he said, but he acknowledged that, when it comes to working with other faith groups, they "are not as well organized."

"Push Us To Be Part Of The System"
Dr. Tracy Parnell of the University of British Columbia Department of Family Medicine noted that it is easy for governments and public health agencies to overlook the role faith communities can play during a pandemic.

"You need to push us to be part of the system," she said. "The faith community is so important during a disaster."

Faith groups should "educate governments" about what they can offer, she went on to say—things like clothing, shelter, food and other services.

Parnell, who works with the B.C. government to help draft guidelines for responding to a pandemic, noted that "spiritual and emotional care" will be an important part of a pandemic response, particularly in helping people to deal with the deaths of loved ones.

But, she added, there will also need to be "spiritual support" for clergy and others attending to the spiritual needs of the community since many people "are not used to dealing with a lot of death."

She encouraged all faith groups to have a pandemic plan, and to practice it. "We have to prepare now," she stated, adding that holding exercises not only tests the plan, but also "engages people and evokes interest."

Pandemic Preparation Not Always Easy To Do
Preparing for a pandemic is essential, but not easy to do, said Revered John MacDonald, Director of Pastoral Care Initiatives for the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton.

"Parishes are cash-strapped," he said, adding there is also a shortage of time and staff to do the extra work and planning. The other challenge, he noted, was not to "communicate a sense of gloom and despair" about a pandemic. "We can do whatever we need to do with God behind us," he concluded.

The Faith Community Summit on Pandemic Preparedness was sponsored by Canadian Mennonite University, the International Centre for Infectious Diseases, the Disaster Response Service of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, the Salvation Army Territorial Emergency Disaster Services, Mennonite Disaster Service and Alliance Parish Nurse Ministries.

For more information on how your church or group can prepare for a pandemic, or other disaster, check out Beyond Our Fears, a four-session guide for congregations and other groups.