One hand washing the other could wash out a quarter of influenza cases in the coming year, Clallam County commissioners learned Tuesday.
They’ll consider health officials’ urgings to install hand-sanitizing stations at entrances to the county courthouse and doors to departments inside it.
The county Health and Human Services department has received an $18,000 grant to prepare for — and prevent — the influenza pandemic that world health officials say is inevitable, sooner or later.
A pandemic is an epidemic prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the entire world.
State health officials say a flu pandemic would be more serious than the seasonal flu because people would have no immunity.
No one knows when a flu pandemic might develop, but health officials are watching the avian flu closely.
They fear that the virus commonly called bird or avian flu could mutate into a disease as deadly to humans as the 1918 influenza that killed millions around the world.
Preventative measures in Clallam and Jefferson counties are intended to reduce all cases of flu — and perhaps blunt the effects should a pandemic develop.
In both counties, the emphasis is on simple measures to reduce the spread of germs from one person to another.
In Jefferson County, efforts include “Cover Your Cough” posters distributed at county schools and making readily available, hand sanitizer solution available.
Some of the $18,000 grant given Clallam County will buy 100 hand-sanitizer dispensers, about half of which would be installed in the courthouse.
HHS Director Iva Burks called the program “public health at its best, which is prevention.”
Dr. Tom Locke, health officer for Clallam and Jefferson counties, said low-tech methods have high-level effects in combating illness.
“The things that really work are fundamental,” he said. “These kinds of techniques are going to be critical if we’re dealing with a pandemic.”
The H5N1 virus — bird flu — has been found in birds throughout all of Asia, most of Europe and about a quarter of Africa.
Humans can catch the disease from handling infected poultry.
World health officials say H5N1 eventually will “make the jump” — mutate — to a strain that humans can spread to humans, and experts expect it to spread around the world.