HBDHB takes part in Exercise Makgill – a national exercise to test pandemic preparedness
Hawke’s Bay District Health Board staff will be put through their paces tomorrow (Thursday 9 November) as they take part
in Exercise Makgill, a 12-hour pandemic planning exercise coordinated by the Ministry of Health.
Every DHB in New Zealand will be taking part, and the exercise is focusing on the ‘Stamp it out’ stage of pandemic
planning, where pandemic influenza is occurring in clusters in fictitious countries, towns and cities called ‘Badrash’
‘Verisore’ ‘Hanglo’ and ‘Nupenj’.
The exercise is designed to test public health interventions, including surveillance, early detection and isolation of
cases, the logistics of quarantining groups of patients, tracing contacts of cases and the allocation of antiviral
medication. It will also test internal and external communications systems and the Coordinated Incident Management
System used for response.
Hawke’s Bay will activate its Emergency Operations Centre from 8:00am tomorrow morning. Throughout the day the team will
receive ‘injects’ of information from the Ministry of Health which will require a regional response.
Two further pandemic exercises are planned for next year: Exercise Russell in February 2007 and Exercise Cruickshank in
May 2007.
ENDS