Often we think of “public health” in terms of just disease outbreaks and immunization clinics. Certainly influenza and other contagious diseases, as well as more unusual diseases such as West Nile virus and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), are of immediate concern. Although influenza is common annually, many people forget that it can be deadly. Historically, more people have died from influenza and its aftermaths than any other single disease. For many years, your local public health department has been working with hospitals, clinics, and other medical providers to prepare for the usual or unusual public health emergencies that may occur. Some of these emergencies might be incidents of severe weather or contaminated food or drinking water. Other hazards might be chemical spills or accidental leaks. The work of public health and its planning efforts prepares us for all these types of emergencies. In recent years we have become increasingly aware of the possibility of threats from terrorism.
The backbone of the nation’s public health system starts at the Local Public Health Department. Often, providing low cost health care services in communities is what many people think of when they hear the term “public health,” but those services are only a small fraction of public health activities. Through assessment, policy development and assurance, the Lee County Health Department strives to protect and promote the health of the people of Lee County by:
Preventing and controlling epidemics and the spread of communicable diseases
Educating the public and community stakeholders
Responding to and assisting communities in recovery
In a bioterrorism incident, epidemic, or infectious disease outbreak, local and state public officials will provide help, but many times local public health will be in the response forefront during the first critical minutes and hours following an incident.
Whether an act of bioterrorism or infectious disease outbreak, regardless of the type of disaster, it is the job of the public health community to respond in order to protect the health of the public. To respond effectively and efficiently, public health will respond in four stages that are typical of any public health response: Assess, Plan, Implement, and Evaluate.
Assess: It is critical to detect an act of bioterrorism or infectious disease outbreak as soon as possible in order to control the spread. Detection can occur in many ways—through an obvious scene or release of a bioterrorism agent; people presenting at hospitals, clinics, emergency rooms; high absenteeism rates in schools, workplaces and churches; or even by unusually high numbers of prescriptions being administered by pharmacists.
Plan: Once a public health emergency has been recognized or detected, public health officials will kick into high gear. Public Health Officials are likely to begin notification of community partners, begin disease investigations through interviews and contact tracing, confirm disease or agent through using the NC Lab Network and finally, begin treating or prophylaxing emergency responders and the community if necessary.
Implement/Evaluate: Once a public health emergency has been confirmed, public health officials may use a variety of tactics to control its effects, ranging from distributing antibiotics to using quarantine strategies.
A disaster for Public Health Preparedness is an incident which overwhelms the resources and staff and requires mutual aid with other responders, community, regional, state or national resources.
Public Health Preparedness outlines critical public health responses including but not limited to isolation and quarantine, legal issues, risk communication, mutual aid, personal protective equipment, communications, mass clinic operations, agent and disease specific information, command and control, and special needs populations.
The Local Public Health Director, in coordination with other local emergency response partners, will decide to activate, partially or fully, the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) Plan in an emergency.