Today’s picture at the back page of the Newsday is almost surreal. 

In it photographer, Sureash Cholai, captures a shot of the Trinidad and Tobago Under-17 football team being taken from the airport yesterday on a bus driven by a man wearing a mask. 

The team had just arrived from Mexico City, the country where the most deaths (150) from swine flu have now been recorded.  

The photo is also telling. A swine flu outbreak in Mexico is just too close to comfort. Mexico is our hemispheric  neighbour.  In China, bird flu had seemed a world away. And as the security guard at our office told me: “ Wasn’t Mexico well represented at the Fifth Summit of the Americas recently, did they not have scores of journalists, protocol people,  and their President here? It’s just matter of time,” he reasoned.

To their credit both Minister of Health and his new corporate communications manager, Dr. Theomary Karamanis, have tried to ease the concerns of the public by holding a series of information based  interviews and ramping up the number of notices on their site.

But with US Federal health officials warnings that  the virus would probably claim lives in the US and the World Health Organisation yesterday calling on all governments to prepare for a swine flu pandemic, it  would be remiss, dare I say, even unprofessional for any business  communicator or PR manager not to be super concerned about a possible outbreak here at home and by extension, in their own organisations.

In Trinidad, I have seen two responses on the corporate communications side. The Engaged. And the Dismissive.

 At Guardian Holdings for instance their corporate communications manager, Maria  Mc Millan, began distributing e-news flashes and updates with pertinent crisp  fact about swine flu. These were distributed to senior leaders, her communications group and other stakeholders. 

At another organisation on Tuesday where I was giving a lecture, I asked the PR team how they were communicating  swine flu; I was met with vacant stares. “No one’s really talking about it,” the  senior communicator said. 

I bet that communicator is dead wrong. 

For sure, her response points to a disconnect between the  corporate communications department who thinks that its goal is to focus on communicating the business of its business as opposed to news  with which employees can really engage.

There is a lot that PR can do in both large and small organisations. 

We can be advisors to our CEOs and clients by becoming more  informed about swine flu. For sure, if  policy is going to be predicated upon  advice and counsel, then we should be reading as much as we can about the disease, verifying facts from credible  sources so that we can   offer the right advice to our leadership teams and customers. For instance, knowing the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic should be part of our vocabulary so we’re sure we are not  creating  unnecessary panic.

Simple things like cross linking to the World Health Organsation’s website and even www.health.gov.tt is practical and makes good sense. Sharing basic information about the simple things that employees can do to contain the spread of germs in their offices can also be placed on the corporate Intranet. It may also be a good time to form a communications working group with links to the IT department because this is certainly shaping up to be a business continutiy issue. Companies may need to prepare for  work-at-home environments, in the event that people stay away from work  because of a number of scenarios like  getting a common cold. 

For PR folks, panicking or even worse, being disengaged  can never be an acceptable substitute "for forethought, contingency planning or actually taking productive action," says marketing expert Seth Godin.

The  photo of the masked  driver on the bus taking the teenaged footballers for their medical tests  proves that.