SARS Experience Provides Pandemic Strategies
SARS Experience Provides Pandemic Strategies
The SARS outbreak in 2003 received extensive media coverage, produced numerous official reports, and ultimately led to the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada. Tyshenko and Patterson (2010) examine the lessons regarding risk communication learned through the outbreak and recommend risk communication strategies to effectively manage a pandemic. The book provides a history of the outbreak in Canada and around the world, details the impact on health professionals, and outlines the failures rooted in communication to provide succinct recommendations for managing future disease outbreaks with effective communication strategies. In Part One, Tyshenko and Patterson detail the history of the outbreak in Canada and examine how the medical community was impacted, how health professionals were affected, and how the coronavirus was transmitted. Social amplification of the disease, which they maintain resulted from fragmented public health communication and media sensationalism (Tyshenko & Patterson, 2010, pp. 122–147), presented a new risk to consider. Also considered in the comparative analysis is how officials in Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and China handled the outbreak, elucidating how different types of governments handle disease crises and respond in a distinct, culturally mediated manner to an outbreak.
Part Two focuses on risk communication. Tyshenko and Patterson (2010) consider the opinions of leading world infectious disease experts who sound the alarm about the world being unprepared for the “next” pandemic (p. 337). They predict the potential seriousness for Canadians of the next pandemic and provide a framework for response (p. 340), writing, “The scope of the next pandemic’s impact will be widespread, and those managing this risk will need to communicate useful information … media coverage will concentrate on increasing numbers of deaths and the impact to area hospitals hardest hit by a new viral strain” (p. 340). They recommend a “risk communication dialogue” among health professionals and governments to ensure public awareness of what is being done to safeguard people.
Tyshenko and Patterson (2010) accurately predict the next pandemic, which is currently being experienced. His observations of risk communications, and recommendations for clear and consistent information intended to help Canadians feel participatory empowerment, encourages concepts of knowledge and self-empowerment. Such concepts encourage buy-in and compliance with current government measures intended to reduce the viral spread of Covid-19 and apply to this research in this aspect.
