Mass vaccination drill in Alaska

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

Mmm hmm.

Alaska health officials and the Anchorage School District teamed up Wednesday to prepare for a worst case scenario by practicing a mass dispensing of vaccines. The exercise comes as the World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert, which means it believes a global outbreak of the swine flu is imminent. No cases of swine flu have been reported in Alaska. Still, health officials say it is possible swine flu will reach our state, and they want to be ready in case it does. Over the past two weeks, 11 schools have participated in an exercise to distribute the chicken pox vaccine to students. This is also a chance to practice dispensing medication in the event of a large scale emergency, according to the Department of Health and Social Services and the school district.

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The timing of this pandemic practice couldn’t be better now that swine flu is sweeping across the nation. “It wasn’t the reason we’re doing this necessarily, but certainly timely. It’s got everybody’s mind on that topic right now,” said Mew.

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