Official offers hands-off approach to flu season

Eric Leake

Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004 | 9:34 a.m.

In this season of a flu vaccine shortage and norovirus outbreak, the Clark County Health District has told people over and over again to wash their hands. On Wednesday Dr. Donald Kwalick went further.

" A lot of disease is spread just by handshaking," said Kwalick, chief officer of the district.

"What I'd like to do is really propose a cultural change," he said. "Instead of handshaking let's salute, let's bow, and maybe even bump fists."

The suggestion was a lighter part of the "Future of Change in Health -- The Impact of the Global Virus" panel discussion during the International Women's Forum World Leadership Conference at the Bellagio.

The discussion included Kwalick; Ambassador Randall Tobias, US global AIDS coordinator; and Dr. Sheela Basrur, chief medical officer of health and deputy minister of health for Ontario, Canada.

Topics ranged from the global fight against HIV/AIDS to SARS to the importance of public health services and Las Vegas's health challenges.

"As a major tourist destination, we really are a natural laboratory for disease," Kwalick said.

Most recently more than 200 people were reported ill with the "stomach flu" -- which is not technically the flu -- in a norovirus outbreak at the Flamingo Las Vegas.

And as a nationwide shortage has increased the demand for limited flu vaccinations. Kwalick spoke to the irony.

"For years we wanted people to get their flu vaccination," Kwalick said. "It's almost like, if you want to have people respond to something, tell them you're not going to have it and they'll show up to get it."

He said the health department has made progress in the past few years by dramatically reducing the number of hepatitis A cases in part through vaccinations, and in working to control sometimes forgotten threats such as tuberculosis.

Basrur, who led the fight in Toronto, Canada, against a SARS outbreak in 2003, said people should expect a lot from their public health systems.

"It's important that governments be held accountable for their commitments and for delivering results," Basrur said. "You pay your taxes. You're citizens."

Public health systems play a critical role in health protection, she said, because "if government doesn't do those jobs, there's no one who can step in and do it for them."

Tobias opened the session by speaking of the U.S. efforts to fight HIV and AIDS in the developing world with particular attention to the plight of women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa.

The four-day International Women's Forum conference began Monday and concludes with a gala today during which Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and astronaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space, will be inducted into the group's Hall of Fame.

Delegates from more than 40 nations met to examine issues ranging from business to natural resources.