Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza
A2. National response structure
Australia’s emergency management arrangements are based on partnerships between the Australian Government, state, territory and local governments and the community. State and territory governments have the constitutional responsibility for emergency management within their jurisdictions. Through cooperative arrangements with states and territories, the Australian Government may be requested to help and can provide:
- a communication hub
- support for states and territories to develop capacity for dealing with emergencies and disasters
- assistance to states or territories when requested by using national assets or coordinating sharing of other state and territory assets
- the services of EMA to coordinate national response and recovery activities.
These arrangements allow all levels of Australian Government to work together to prevent, plan, respond to and recover from a range of emergencies such as a pandemic. These arrangements and governance are formalised in a range of emergency planning and response documents maintained by EMA.
Coordination in health sector from the DELAY phase onwards
One of the outcomes from Exercise Cumpston ‘06 was the need to streamline decision making in the emergency response phase. This section will outline how the committee structures described above will be rationalised during an influenza pandemic.
Once DELAY is announced, the committees will merge to enable a streamlined process for emergency decision-making (Figure 4). Note the figure describes major linkages and reporting lines–cross linkages have not been shown.
Figure 4: Key health sector committees during the response to a pandemic
National health sector strategic decision making
From the DELAY phase onwards, the Secretary of the DoHA and the CEO from state and territory Departments of Health, will join the AHPC at decision points, such as when making major strategic decisions or when developing advice to inform a whole of government response. This group will meet at turning points in the development of a pandemic overseas and will meet regularly if a pandemic spreads to Australia. Within each jurisdiction, members of this group will advise their own Minister for Health. However, Health Ministers may meet as part of AHMC if extraordinary measures are required, or if the expanded AHPC strategic decision making committee cannot reach consensus.
Health sector expert advice
The expanded AHPC strategic decision making committee will receive expert technical advice from the CMO as required.
The CMO will be supported by the following technical advisory committees:
- The EAG will continue to advise the CMO on the pandemic phases.
- The Chief Medical Officer’s Scientific Pandemic Advisory Group (SPAG) will review the pandemic planning assumptions and the medical and scientific basis for health sector interventions, and provide advice to the CMO on the need to modify response policies in light of any new information. SPAG will combine expertise from:
Health sector operational advice
The NHEMRN will provide advice to the AHPC on the implementation and coordination of the public communications response to a pandemic for the health sector.
The expanded AHPC will consider operational and expert technical advice from the Pandemic Control Network (PCN) as part of their strategic decision-making. In addition, the expanded AHPC committee may request the PCN to coordinate specific operational elements of the national response as required.
The PCN will combine expertise from the following groups:
Introduction - Why plan for an influenza pandemic
Part 3: More information for decision makers and health professionals
