Dr. Nowak shared his experience, "by the end of the first week of the H1N1 episode, our own laboratory had identified 39 cases of probable H1N1 infection, only a fraction of which had been corroborated by our state public health laboratory, and confirmed only sometime after day 8." The CDC tally for all of Illinois at the end that week was still only 3 cases confirmed, a number widely reported in the media, which greatly misinformed the public and the medical community of the true nature of the spread of this disease in Illinois.

With the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology warning that more than half of the US population will be infected with the H1N1 influenza virus this flu season, AMP encourages close collaboration between molecular diagnostics laboratories, CDC, and public health laboratories to ensure prompt diagnosis and timely surveillance of the outbreak. Dr. Nowak expressed his pride in his profession's role in the outbreak, "In the recent H1N1 outbreak, I believe the quality of laboratory testing has been outstanding, as has been the response of molecular diagnostics laboratories to this public health emergency."

AMP's members are physicians, doctoral scientists and medical technologists with expertise in developing, validating and providing laboratory tests based on molecular methods. They have the education, training and experience to offer high quality molecular diagnostic testing for influenza and AMP members stand ready to help with clinical confirmation of disease and surge capacity during a larger outbreak.

Source: Association for Molecular Pathology