By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

A forum in which representatives from businesses, schools, churches and local governments could learn more about getting prepared for pandemic flu has been tentatively set for Thursday, May 17, at Missouri Southern State University.

Members of the Pandemic Planning Committee for Joplin and Jasper County met Thursday at the university and were updated on developments for a local response plan.

Each business, church and school district will be asked to name a representative to send to the forum to pick up information about how the groups should prepare for a pandemic outbreak of the flu.

Local health officials say it is conceivable that a manufacturing plant might lose half its workers to illness, and that a substantial number might die. Businesses, they say, must develop plans of survival should that happen.

Members of the committee said a mailing list is being developed to notify businesses, schools and churches in the area about the forum.

Plans call for the forum to be conducted in Webster Hall. An opening session would be followed by break-out sessions for specific groups. The committee discussed the possibility of staging a separate meeting that the public could attend in conjunction with the forum.

The committee selected www.JasCoFlu.com as the most likely domain name for a Web site that would release local information about a flu outbreak in the event of a pandemic. Creation of the Web site is being managed by the Regional Economic Development Center at MSSU. Plans call for the Web site to be active in about two weeks.

Pandemic flu is a worldwide outbreak of an influenza virus to which people have little resistance. Depending on the potency of the virus, thousands of Americans, possibly millions, could die, health officials say. The committee has been meeting monthly since October to get the community ready for a potential pandemic flu.

In 1918, the Spanish flu killed tens of millions of people worldwide, including at least 500,000 in the United States. The last major influenza pandemic occurred in 1968, when Hong Kong flu killed up to 1 million people worldwide, including 34,000 in the United States.

Officials are concerned that the trigger for the next pandemic could be a mutation of H5N1, also known as avian or bird flu. For the virus to become a global killer, it would have to mutate into a form that can pass easily from human to human.