2009 saw the pandemic of H1N1, more commonly known as the “swine flu”, stir fear around the globe and send our nations Center for Disease Control scrambling to insure enough vaccines would be manufactured to stave off any major U.S. outbreak.Typically, short of catastrophic consequences locally, a story about an anticipated virus outbreak wouldn’t constitute a year-end top ten finish.
However, as it would happen, a forward thinking Governor and a new industrial partner in Jonesboro would team up with local government and public schools to create an opportunity for Northeast Arkansas to participate in a study that could eventually have an international impact.
In late September of last year Arkansas First Lady Ginger Beebe paid a visit to the Arkansas State University campus to kick off the Healthy Arkansas initiative, a program designed at Governor Beebe’s request by new Jonesboro industrial partner Nice-Pak/Professional Disposables International, Inc. The goal was to engage the efforts of Dr. Carl Abraham, an infectious disease specialist now practicing in Jonesboro, to study the impact on preventive hand hygiene on the spread of communicable disease; among those, H1N1.Dr. Susan Hanrahan’s College of Healthcare Professional students from Arkansas State University would help to gather and organize the data.
The first lady went into local schools to teach hand hygiene to students in order to cut down on the outbreak of the H1N1 (Swine) flu virus and other communicable diseases. The visits to the school were made possible by Governor Beebe.
Healthy Arkansas is a multi-faceted program designed to teach hand hygiene in an effort to decrease the risk of sharing infectious diseases.The initiative has created partnerships with the governor’s office, ASU, the Jonesboro Regional Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Harold Perrin’s office, the Jonesboro Public School system, St. Bernards Medical Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Nice-Pak/PDI.
Joann Reilly, director of marketing for Nice-Pak/PDI, said, “Our goal is to teach hand hygiene to the students in the local public schools. We (the company) just moved into Jonesboro and we want to be involved. We thought we would reach out to the community to teach hand hygiene to the students since the H1N1 flu virus has become so widespread. The biggest thing we are trying to teach the students is to use hand wipes as opposed to the gel hand sanitizers because in order to get rid of the germs you need the friction of the wipe s to remove the bacteria ... That is very, very important in reducing infection. One of the most important things we are doing here today is teaching these students proper hand hygiene, but we are also encouraging the students to go back home and teach it to their parents and family members.”
Additionally, Nice-Pak placed hand hygiene floorstands and brackets throughout the community at businesses, schools and city buildings to make hand hygiene more accessible.
When speaking about the Healthy Arkansas Initiative, PDI CEO Zachary T. Julius said, "Our objective is to reduce the cost of healthcare for the Arkansas community while simultaneously decreasing absenteeism in schools and the workforce, improving overall productivity. This program can serve as a national model for government, business and education working in partnership to reduce the potential local impact of the H1N1 pandemic."
"By involving both the healthcare community and the citizens and businesspeople of Jonesboro in this unique hand hygiene and infection prevention education program, we expect to demonstrate significant reductions in both community and healthcare acquired infections," said Hudson Garrett Jr., PhD, director of clinical affairs for PDI.
Massive flu clinics were held statewide as the flu vaccines became available. Also, clinics were set up in local school districts to ensure the children were given the opportunity to receive both vaccinations.In 2009 there were approximately five deaths in the state of Arkansas from the swine flu virus.
