AF Academy Stems Swine Flu Fear with Talk

Flu?

Here, take this cell phone and call your parents in the morning.

Odd as that may sound, that approach -- along with isolation, treatment and rest -- was included in the Air Force Academy response following an outbreak in July of H1N1 -- a.k.a. Swine Flu -- on its Colorado Springs campus.

Air Force Col. Kenneth Knight, commander of the 10th Medical Group, said communication was deemed critical, up and down the chain-of-command and beyond.

"We could not communicate too much," Knight said during an interview with military bloggers today from the Pentagon. "That communication would be with the cadet wing, with the line leadership, with the community, because [informed] people are much more comfortable with what goes on verses the hysteria and undue concerns" that can occur without information.

The academy outbreak - one of the largest on any U.S. college campus -- extended to 11 percent of the basic cadet student who arrived on June 25, or 134 students, said Lt. Col. Catherine Witkop, a preventive medicine physician from the 10th MDG who served on the response team.

Knight emphasized the importance of keeping everyone as informed as possible during the entire episode. He said the team overseeing the response to the outbreak counted on "strategic communications folks" to make sure information collected and given out was complete and accurate, and what had to be cleared through the Defense Department was cleared quickly -- within five hours, Knight said. The information was then released to local and national print and television media, radio and the Internet via bloggers, he said.

"And [communication] included cadets talking to their parents," he said. "One of the things the cadet wing did, that is unusual, was for every cadet that got sick to allow them to have a cell phone. They really encouraged them to have a cell phone, to talk to their parents so the parents wouldn't be unduly concerned, [asking] 'Is my Johnny going to die on me tomorrow?' "

Knight, Witkop and other members of the team subsequently wrote about the outbreak and response for the Oct. 20 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The Journal, in announcing publication of the group's report, said the academy and the Air Force's response to the outbreak provided a "unique" opportunity to study its behavior.

Among the results of their findings was that the flu virus could still be viable even after a victim was symptom free more than 24 hours. The Air Force's response also may assist in developing more appropriate protocols for isolation of high-risk settings and provides the basis for other investigators to do further research on the spread of the virus, the Journal said when releasing its Oct. 20 edition.

According to Knight, when the academy's newest class converged on the campus in late June there was no indication that anyone was suffering from flu. The next month, however, following a major Fourth of July event with large numbers of people present, all that changed.

Since the outbreak, the team has continued to share information with other bases, including Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, home to Air Force basic training, Witkop said.

"We at the academy learned a lot about H1N1 and we hope that in acting quickly to set up a team to look at it" civilians benefit from the lesson, she said. "I was really pleased we were able to capitalize on the opportunity to learn more about the virus and provide that information to the CDC {Centers for Disease Control}, the military and the United States at large."