OTTAWA — The Public Health Agency of Canada has identified 34 ways it could do better the next time an influenza pandemic strikes the country.
The agency released its lessons learned report on how the government handled the H1N1 pandemic of 2009.
Overall, the agency said the government’s response to the pandemic was effective.
“For H1N1, lessons learned from the first wave were applied to activities during the second wave,” the report said.
“It is expected that the lessons learned from this Review will lead to an even more efficient and effective response to future pandemics and other types of national public health events.”
A recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that there were 8,678 hospital admissions related to the pandemic, including 1,473 admissions to intensive care.
There were 428 deaths.
The government report noted some of the government’s effectiveness stemmed from putting in place recommendations made following other disease outbreaks, like SARS in 2003 and listeriosis in 2008.
But some of the failures of how the H1N1 pandemic was handled were also due to the fact that other recommendations from those instances weren’t implemented.
Those included putting in place a public health surveillance system.