Events with Minister of Health and Chief Public Health Officer

Opening remarks: Severe H1N1 Disease: Preventing Cases; Reducing Mortality

The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health
September 2, 2009 - 9:30 EDT

Distinguished delegates, international guests,

Welcome to Winnipeg.  It is an honour and a privilege for me to be here today, to welcome you and launch this important conference.  With us today are over 150 delegates, representing the federal health portfolio, Canada’s provinces and territories and medical representatives from the Assembly of First Nations and Southern Chiefs Organization. We are also honoured to welcome our international partners from the World Health Organization, as well as from Australia, Chile, Ireland and the United States.  Together we make up a very comprehensive body including critical care and public health experts, and members of both the political and public service communities.

It does take a lot of hard work to pull a group like this together for a common purpose. In that respect, I want to deliver my sincere thanks to everyone at the Public Health Agency of Canada, Manitoba Health, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and the University of Manitoba for their efforts in coordinating this event.

We’ve come together today on the brink of a second pandemic wave of H1N1, the occurrence and severity of which we can’t yet predict.  I think that if there’s one message everyone here has heard loud and clear, it’s that infectious disease outbreaks are not bound by borders.  The fact that this second wave will inevitably affect every country only drives home that point.
It is every government's duty to protect the health and safety of its people.  Therefore, whether we are dealing with H1N1 or any future outbreak, it is in the national interest of all countries to fight it together.  Collectively, it is the responsibility of each of us in this room today.  What’s more, we can all profit by learning from past experience to improve our future response and prevention efforts. 

On that note, I am so pleased to say that today’s conference is truly a milestone.  This is the first conference of its kind in Canada, bringing together a broad range of experts and decision-makers for the clinical care and management of H1N1.

Our goal over the next two days will be to share our considerable knowledge and experience, identify our shared challenges and determine how best we can work together.  In concrete terms, the outcome of this event will ultimately be concrete guidance on the epidemiology and clinical management of H1N1 disease.  This will be very important for the health care workers on the front lines of the outbreak.  Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, will tell you more about this in a moment.

But before I end my remarks, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the great investment you make on all our behalf.  We depend critically on all of your knowledge and your work.  You are able to communicate quickly and clearly in challenging circumstances.  You are able to adapt to emerging and unprecedented events.  You are able to change course or shift strategy with speed and efficiency.
 
This kind of resilience will ultimately be the measure of our success with H1N1.  Everyone here today is playing an important role, as we continue to collaborate in the monitoring and surveillance of the H1N1 flu virus.  This kind of sharing of information and cooperation enables us to learn even more about how the virus behaves and spreads.

I know that as our partnerships strengthen, we will come much closer to our shared goals – to keep our populations healthy, and prevent and manage the spread of H1N1.  I want to wish you all a very successful and productive conference, and I thank you for your dedication, for your generosity of time and expertise, and for all of your hard work.

Thank you. Merci. Gracias. 

I’ll turn the podium over now to Dr. Butler-Jones. 

Dr. David Butler-Jones
Chief Public Health Officer of Canada

Thank you, Minister, for your remarks. Merci pour cette allocution, madame la Ministre.

We have been waiting to hold this meeting for some time and, like the Minister, I really appreciate the contributions that all participants will make to the discussions to be held over the next two days. 

I’m very pleased to see all of you with us today, and I thank you all for agreeing to participate in what we anticipate as being a very important event in preparing for the next wave of this pandemic.  I’d like to begin by briefly elaborating on the Minister’s remarks, and discussing our objectives in greater detail.

There’s an old business adage that warns you can’t manage what you don’t measure.  It’s a simple and important rule of thumb. But any good public health expert here will tell you it’s not the whole story – it doesn’t necessarily mean you can manage what you do.  In the case of H1N1, managing and measuring are fluid concepts.  What we’re trying to measure keeps changing.  And it’s the entire world trying to manage, not just an individual or a business, or even a country.  We need to be able to work from something concrete.  That’s why we’re here right now.

We’re here together to measure – measure our data, our successes, our strategies and our shared challenges – so that we can all manage.  And our objective here is to develop reliable, comprehensive guidance to do just that.  And before I close I’ll just say that it’s encouraging to be here at a forum of experts committed to working together across disciplines.

We all have a role to play.  I want to thank you for being here, and I am really eager to begin our discussions.  I believe Dr. Frank Plummer, Scientific Director General, National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada, will say a few words before we get started.

Thank you.  Merci.

Dr. Frank Plummer
Scientific Director General, National Microbiology Laboratory

Thank you, Dr. Butler-Jones. 

I’ll try to keep my remarks brief this morning, so that we can get started with our technical briefing and our conference.  But before I begin I would like to reinforce the Minister’s and Dr. Butler-Jones’ thank-you to delegates and organizers.  It is a particular honour for me, both as a full-time resident of this city and as Scientific Director of the National Microbiology Laboratory, to welcome such a broad range of experts here to Winnipeg.

As you may know, the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory is operating at full capacity.  I wanted to point this out, as some of our guests may not be aware that right here in Winnipeg, we have a world-class laboratory with capacity to respond to this situation as it evolves.  Some of the country’s top scientists are here, conducting research, analyzing samples and carrying out the scientific activities critical to Canada's public health response.  So if I may I would like to extend a formal welcome to all of you on behalf of everyone at the lab.  It has been wonderful to work with many of you already, and we will continue to work with our international partners, sharing information and expertise as required.  For example, one of the things we are working on is partnering with provinces, territories and intensive care units across the country in research to determine how and why severe illness is affecting certain people and not others.  I do hope that some of this work will contribute to our discussion over the next few days.

Now, before we begin those discussions, I’d like to quickly outline the general conference proceedings.  This morning – in fact, in just a few minutes, I’ll be hosting our first plenary session which will provide us with some context and a current overview of H1N1.

Our second plenary will focus on what we call “Severe Disease Epidemic Narratives”, which will focus on some of the lessons and challenges from the front lines of H1N1 care and management.  This afternoon, we’ll be looking at some practical aspects of managing an epidemic, and finally we will take a look at surge capacity, as Dr. Butler-Jones mentioned. 

Finally, tomorrow, we’ll have a series of breakout sessions followed by a plenary on the scope of H1N1 from an international perspective.  And we will cap off the conference with an afternoon technical briefing for the media.  Here, we’ll have a chance to speak to what we’ve learned and on the guidance and outcomes the Minister and Dr. Butler-Jones mentioned.

So, without further ado, I’m pleased to officially open our conference, which we’ll begin with a technical briefing.

Thank you again for being here, and enjoy your stay in Winnipeg.