Pandemic influenza planning for the mental health security of survivors of mass deaths

Abstract

Influenza A pandemics have been documented to occur at 10- to 50-year intervals—an average of three events per century, dating back from the 16th century. Each recorded pandemic has resulted in an increase in annual mortality rates in the infected population, with mass deaths in one pandemic wave equalling fatalities sustained over six months of an epidemic season. This chapter aims to rectify the oversight in pandemic preparedness plans by presenting a compendium of guidelines and recommendations by international health organisations, pandemic fatality experts, and experienced mass death management professionals. Its objective is to have available a mass fatality framework to complement the WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response (2009) guideline, from which individual national pandemic preparedness plans are based. It is written in a format that incorporates WHO’s emphasis on finding the ethical balance between human rights and successful plan implementation; the assimilation of national pandemic plans with existing national emergency measures; and the ‘whole group’ system of engaging individuals, families, localities, and business establishments in the process. This chapter is also written such that it can be made applicable to analogous infectious disease outbreaks such as SARS and Ebola, as well as comparable mass fatality events.