Exercise Cruickshank

Northland DHB staff will be testing their ability to cope with an outbreak of avian flu when they take part in Exercise Cruickshank, a national tabletop exercise which runs throughout May.

The exercise, organised and run by the Ministry of Health, will involve all of New Zealand's District Health Boards and will take place on 10, 16, 17 and 23 May.

It follows on from Exercise Makgill, which was held in November 2006. Cruickshank differs from Makgill by being a whole-of-government exercise, involving a range of organisations and agencies which would be involved in dealing with avian flu in the event of a real pandemic.

Exercise Cruickshank is in several phases: “Keep It Out”, “Stamp It Out”, “Manage It” and “Recover From It”.

10 May is the “Keep It Out” stage, focusing on border controls. Health professionals and others will be asked to respond to a scenario in which avian flu has begun spreading from human to human in an overseas country.

16 and 17 May are the “Stamp It Out” and “Manage It” phases, in which staff will respond to a scenario whereby the disease has entered New Zealand and is starting to spread among the population. 23 May is the “Recover from it” phase, in which agencies and the community return to normal functioning following successful containment of an outbreak.

On 17 May Northland DHB will set up a Community Based Assessment Centre (CBAC) outside Whangarei Hospital. Red Cross volunteers and drama students from Whangarei Boys’ and Girls’ high schools will act as “victims” suffering from various stages of the disease, to test health staff’s ability to establish and manage temporary triage centres from which to treat flu sufferers.

The exercise will also involve staff at DHB hospitals in Kaitaia, Bay of Islands and Dargaville, who will carry out a tabletop exercise to establish where they would set up a CBAC and how they would manage the flow of patients.

Ruth McKenzie, Northland DHB’s Emergency Planner, said: “The public will not see much activity during this tabletop exercise, except on 17 May when we will establish a CBAC at Whangarei Hospital. However they should be assured that the DHB and many other agencies in Northland and around New Zealand have been working very hard behind the scenes developing plans for the event of an avian flu pandemic. These plans will be tested thoroughly during the course of Exercise Cruickshank, and will enable us to determine the areas where we need to do more preparation.

“There is further work to be done in terms of preparing the wider community and working with Maori groups in the event of a pandemic, but these things are in hand and will form the next stage of our emergency planning.”

 

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For further information, please contact:

Clare Blackburn, Communications Manager

Northland District Health Board 

Phone (09) 430 4101 ext 3315