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Donald W. Benson is a senior litigator in the Atlanta office of Littler Mendelson who specializes in labor law and communicable diseases in the workplace, among other areas. He seeks to help employers avoid, resolve and litigate employment disputes, including those involving pandemic preparation in the workplace and MRSA staph infections in the workplace.
Founded in 1942 by the head of California's War Labor Board, Littler Mendelson is one of the leading labor and workplace law firms in the nation. With more than 600 attorneys in 43 offices, its practice extends into virtually every area and sub-area of workplace law: corporate compliance, labor, employment and benefits.Discussion of bird flu may have died off in the news media, but odds of it or another type of pandemic flu are still high. In fact, health authorities say the world is long overdue for one. And that means businesses should have a plan in place -- especially if their continued operations would be crucial to the public when a pandemic strikes. In drawing up plans, company officials will have to decide whether they should go through the expense and headache of obtaining and maintaining a stockpile of antivirals.
Many businesses had good reason for dismissing the idea immediately -- it was too expensive for an uncertain payoff and involved a series of logistical challenges and headaches. No longer. "It is time to reassess whether stockpiling of antiviral medications makes sense for your layered approach to pandemic preparation so as to minimize the spread of the pandemic and to promote as quick a resumption of operations as possible," writes Donald Benson, a labor law attorney with Littler Mendelson who is an expert in communicable diseases in the workplace.
Stockpiling makes more sense and is easier now because the government has issued new advice for how to use and stockpile antivirals, new help in setting up a stockpile is available and the understanding of the role of antivirals in a pandemic is clearer. Anyone stockpiling antivirals has some huge responsibilities: finding and securing a place for them; keeping track of expiration dates and setting up systems for distributing them and monitoring for side effects -- to name just a few. But now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that health centers and pharmacies can be used as stockpiles. Antiviral manufacturers are offering, for a fee, to not just supply the drugs, but to take care of most of the various logistical and administrative problems of keeping and distributing a stockpile.
Benson also lays out the type of criteria -- who gets the drugs, under what circumstances and when, for instance -- employers will have to set if they decide to stockpile and what legal and ethical considerations are involved. He discusses, too, how a company can work with health officials to make sure appropriate steps and rules are being followed.
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