Northwest Indiana needs to unite in planning for the possibility of pandemic flu, a top region business leader told members of the Lake County Advancement Committee Friday.

Cal Bellamy, former president of Bank Calumet and part of the advancement committee's disaster planning sub-committee, said area hospitals and some county agencies are working on plans, but it's not enough.

"It seems too much of a patch quilt arrangement," Bellamy said.

Experts have not been able to predict a pandemic flu outbreak with certainty but contend the threat was raised with the emergence of the H5N1 virus in Southeast Asia, where the number of human deaths related to the so-called bird flu increased beginning in 2005.

It's feared the virus would spread quickly worldwide, sickening or killing thousands.

Area hospitals, which would quickly be inundated with sick patients in the event of a pandemic, have been meeting monthly to come up with a joint plan, and some have expanded plans to include neighborhood schools and other institutions, Bellamy said.

A Lake County disaster management plan created in 2003 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is more focused on planning for similar attacks, Bellamy said.

He called on area civic and elected leaders to "unify their efforts."

Private grant money of up to $100,000 for emergency planning might be available to the region to help in the effort, Bellamy said.

Planning for the possibility of pandemic influenza is not like planning for other disasters, Bellamy said.

In most other disasters, work is done to contain them, "and then you get back to work. In a pandemic, each day that goes by -- it gets worse," Bellamy said.