As concerns surrounding the H1N1 flu mount, Western and health officials are relying on technology to help provide the public with information.

The distribution of up-to-date information has become a particularly important issue, as the London death toll recently reached five.

“We’re not releasing the specifics about the deaths,” Dan Flaherty, communications manager for the Middlesex-London Health Unit, said. “We’re basically trying to alarm the community of what is going on; for anyone who was wondering if the illness is here, it’s here.”

Western has used an online absence-reporting tool, which allows students with flu-like symptoms to inform the University of their absence without setting foot on campus.

“I would like to think that students who have got the flu will know that we will provide them with the academic accommodations, and [they will] recognize the risk of infecting other people,” Gitta Kulczycki, chair of the Western’s Emergency Operations Control Group, said. “I’m hopeful that they will appreciate that we are taking every measure we can to accommodate them with their academic studies, and [we] encourage them to stay home with their fever.”

According to Kulczycki, the success of the program is demonstrated by the number of people using it.

“On any given day we have roughly 500 students who are reporting that they are absent from the flu. To put that into perspective we have 30,000 students,” Kulczycki said. “It should give you an indication that 500 out of 30,000 is relatively low, and it has stayed pretty consistent at this point in time.”

The MLHU has put a spin on this technological trend by using Twitter to help manage the volume of patrons at immunization stations.

“It’s the first time that we’ve used Twitter, and we’ve been very pleased with the results,” Graham Pollett, medical officer of health for MLHU, said.

“We have over 300 people who are members, but we also find that the media are using our tweets to make announcements over the radio and on television regarding the wait times.”

Most of the tweets include reminders of who is eligible and what they should bring to the clinic.

Updated regularly, the tweets even specify wait times, such as yesterday’s post: “People trickling into Westminster SS clinic today. The wait is somewhere between five and 10 minutes.”

Frequent updates about immunization clinics and other important information regarding the vaccination are available on the MLHU Twitter feed, at twitter.com/MLHealthUnit.