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Exercise a learning opportunity for agencies
Spring break didn’t prevent a learning experience Thursday at South Putnam High School.
The pupils, though, were local emergency responders, most notably the Putnam County Health Department, Putnam County Hospital and the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).
Taking part in a regional exercise that’s been going on throughout the week, the emergency exercise helped the agencies determine how they would respond in the event of an outbreak of an infectious disease.
The disease in question is tularemia, a bacterial disease that causes pneumonia-like symptoms and can be aerosolized and spread through the air.
With mass infections a possibility with such a disease, it was the perfect candidate for such an exercise, Health Department Environmental Health Specialist and Preparedness Coordinator Lisa Zeiner said.
“The purpose of it is to get as many people through in as short a time as possible,” Zeiner told the Banner Graphic.
The goal, Zeiner said, was to get 100 patients through in an hour, no small task considering the multiple stations involved in the process.
In the end, inclement weather and spring break — students played many of the patients — prevented turnout and 45 went through the exercise.
These people actually represented 68 patients, since it was set up for the head of household to obtain medicines for an entire family.
The process involved the patients arriving at the first station filling out paperwork for their household.
They then proceeded to a doctor or nurse who determined what kind of medicine and how much was needed.
Medicine was distributed at the final station.
Zeiner praised the contribution of CERT volunteers.
“CERT played a role in manning the station and in crowd control,” she said.
Besides the involvement of local volunteers, the exercise was also observed by representatives of Union Hospital as well as the health departments of Parke, Clay and Vigo counties.
Although this exercise involved the distribution of pills to stem the outbreak, Zeiner said a similar setup could be used to administer vaccination shots, such as in an influenza outbreak.
More broadly, the event was part of an effort taking place at various points around Central Indiana this week.
It began with a hypothetical outbreak in Hamilton County, followed by notification of the other 10 counties in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Statistical Area.
In the days since, the other counties have conducted operations similar to Thursday’s action at South Putnam.
“It was very good for being our first time doing this,” Zeiner said.