A Knoxville company that operates medical clinics at truck stops has put its clinics on “high alert” for swine flu as the rest of the world prepares for the possibility of a serious outbreak.

“Truckers travel more than 600 miles a day,” said Dr. John McElligot, CEO of Professional Drivers Medical Depots, which serves the highly transient and largely uninsured community of long-haul truck drivers. “It’s truckers that spread things when there’s something of pandemic or epidemic proportions.”

The swine flu is a “complicated issue,” and more information will be available about the virus over the next few days, said Dr. Randall Curnow, medical director for Summit Medical Group, which serves nine counties in the East Tennessee region.

“People need to be aware that there is a novel influenza virus out there,” Curnow said. “I think, as the president said, there is a cause for concern, not a cause for alarm. We need to pay close attention to this.”

PDMD has five truck-stop locations including Knoxville, but its Texas clinics in El Paso and Laredo are of particular concern because of their close proximity to Mexico, the outbreak’s epicenter. Additionally, McElligot said many truck drivers live close to or in Mexico.

McElligot said he has been in contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he hopes to set up PDMD clinics as monitoring centers to help control the spread of the swine flu.

McElligot said he was “up most of the night” going through logs and contacting at-risk patients, and as a precaution, he said he has advised at-risk patients to visit one of the clinics for an examination.

Curnow said Summit has received “a few” calls from concerned patients, but a survey of doctors in the medical group shows “the population has not been terribly alarmed,” and there is “no panic or deep concern.”

Curnow said he has had contact with county authorities, and he has sent educational information from the CDC to doctors. Additionally, Curnow said Summit is in the process of setting itself up to do “informal surveillance reporting” to serve as a liaison in discussions with the health department.

Curnow and other doctors in the group are advising the public to take “normal precautions,” as they would with any influenza virus: wash hands or use alcohol-based hand sanitizer frequently, and if people do get sick, they should stay home.

Knox County has a pandemic emergency flu plan, which has been in place since Sept. 11, 2001, and the county has prepared the plan through practice drills, according to Ranee Randby, spokeswoman for the Knox County Health Department.

Randby said health department officials held a conference call with the state today.

“That’s when we’ll talk about making some plans if that’s even necessary at this point,” she said.

The Knox County school system does not issue any cautions or alerts until officials receive notice from the health department, said Russ Oaks, schools spokesman.

Source: KnoxNews.com