US agency finds fault with flu preparedness

* Study says more needs to be done to prepare for pandemic

* New HHS data does not include H1N1 preparations

WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - U.S. states and local communities may be ill-prepared to respond to a flu pandemic and could face manpower and logistical problems as they try to distribute vaccines and drugs, a federal watchdog said on Monday.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general found that some states and municipalities have failed to take basic steps from recruiting crucial personnel to tracking available hospital beds and medical equipment.

The agency also found that preparedness plans often did not say where the staff needed to distribute vaccines and other drugs would come from, and failed to identify the individuals and organizations who would be responsible for specific tasks.

The data, collected last year from 10 municipalities and five states, provides a snapshot of flu preparedness as of August 2008.

It does not reflect preparations for the H1N1 swine flu pandemic that have been undertaken since the federal government allocated more than $1.4 billion in funding for state and local governments.

But it does reflect several years of reports showing the U.S. public health system and hospitals in general are barely prepared to cope with the daily onslaught of disease and accidents, let alone a serious pandemic.

"Although the selected states and localities are making progress ... more needs to be done to improve states' and localities' ability to respond to a pandemic," government investigators concluded.

The inspector general recommended that HHS and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention work more closely to address weaknesses.

Federal health officials are racing to try to stay ahead of the swine flu virus, which is now active in all 50 U.S. states and was declared a pandemic in June. They expect the first roll-out of vaccines early next month.

The virus is causing moderate disease, with a death rate similar to that seen in seasonal flu, which kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally and about 36,000 in the United States each year. But H1N1 may infect far more people than seasonal flu because so few people have immunity.

One problem the HHS inspector general did not examine involves job cuts among public health workers due to budget restraints caused by economic weakness.

The National Association of County and City Health Officials, which represents 2,800 local health departments and is known as NACCHO, said about 8,000 staff positions were cut by city, county and other local health departments between January and June. That follows the loss of about 7,000 jobs in 2008.

Another 3,000 health employees had their hours cut while 9,000 more were placed on mandatory furloughs, the group said.

"These data demonstrate that the economic strains on local and state government budgets are reducing public health resources at a time when a stable public health system is greatly needed," NACCHO executive director Robert Pestronk said in a statement.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)