The World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert to its second-highest level Wednesday, indicating the outbreak of swine flu that originated in Mexico is nearing widespread human infection. Dr. Margaret Chan, the U.N. agency’s director-general, said the decision to raise the alert to level five on its six-point scale means all countries "should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/29/swine.flu/index.html for the full article.

The declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.

What are you doing to prepare your organization against this? Beware thinking that this will not impact locally.

Look at today’s newspaper headlines……

I would suggest an urgent revamp of your Crisis Management & Crisis Communication plans. How ready are you?

The time to act is now!