This is a very interesting article.
https://www.offgridweb.com/survival/government-response-disease-outbreaks-health-emergencies/
Government Response to Disease Outbreaks – Outbreaking News
Separating Fact from Fiction in the Government’s Response Plans for Health Emergencies
Written by John Schwartze on May 15, 2018
https://www.offgridweb.com/survival/government-response-disease-outbreaks-health-emergencies/#top
It’s a deeply rooted fear in the psyche of our culture. What would happen if a large-scale, deadly disease outbreak occurred in close proximity to where we live? Our minds quickly run to scenes from films like Outbreak, Contagion, or I Am Legend as far as how the public would react and what the government would do to intervene.
After we stopped hyperventilating about the possibility of roadblocks being set up, curfews being implemented, and soldiers in hazmat suits herding infected people into quarantine zones, we asked ourselves, “Are these realistic situations, or are we victims of Hollywood lore?” We were curious ourselves about what government protocol is for dealing with outbreaks and went to the experts to find out.
What is an Outbreak?
Actually this term is somewhat subjective and unfortunately gets thrown around, particularly by the media, without proper context. However, there are some terms with which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describe disease levels, and the term “outbreak” is synonymous with “epidemic.” The CDC doesn’t have epidemic thresholds for every disease, but are always monitoring disease levels throughout the world. These terms defined by the CDC can help shed some light on the amount of pathogens present in a population at any given time.
Endemic: The constant presence and/or usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area. (For example, Ebola is endemic to West Africa, but not the United States.)
Epidemic: Increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area.
Outbreak: Same definition as epidemic but is often used for a more limited geographic area.
Pandemic: An epidemic involving several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people.
Health Emergency Response
(Photo by Joern Pollex/Getty Images)
A health emergency in itself is a complex thing with many variables. Although the CDC, the World Health Organization (WHO), and Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists mandate that when certain pathogens are diagnosed at the local level that they be reported to higher authorities, such as the Ebola discovery in Texas, it doesn’t necessarily mean a public health emergency will be declared or federal involvement is automatically triggered.
A disease outbreak has certain elements that determine the appropriate response. How fatal is the pathogen? What ways is it communicable? How many are believed to be infected? Are vaccines or treatments available to deal with it? These are all factors that determine the best methods for treatment and containment when first identified.
“There is not a single protocol for responding to a public health emergency,” says Jason McDonald, spokesman for the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. “As you can imagine, a disease outbreak is handled differently from a natural disaster. Even among disease outbreaks, none are handled the same.”
As examples, the recent discovery of E. coli linked to Chipotle restaurants would warrant a different response than the SARS outbreak first reported in Asia in 2003. SARS is an airborne contagion, but E. coli is not transmitted person to person and is usually linked to contaminated food.
Calls to Action
A number of guidelines at the local level, as defined by the Office of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the CDC, would be implemented to handle highly infectious diseases like Ebola when they’re initially discovered. Once the infection is reported and confirmed, the state health department would report it to the CDC, which collaborates with WHO. They start monitoring the number of cases recorded through a database of hospital admissions and discharged patients to track the trend. Local agencies ultimately make the determination if more help is needed for treatment and containment based on the number of cases they are seeing.
(Photo by Stephen Morton/Getty Images)
States have their own public health emergency plans, usually available to view on state health department websites. There are some federal programs built to deal with the consistencies that all emergencies share, but there are also different programs for different purposes.
“There are public health emergencies that do not involve diseases,” says Elleen Kane, who handles strategic communications at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “Most public health emergencies are declared for natural disasters, not diseases. It’s not so much of a hierarchy as it is a collaboration.
“Federal public health emergency response is led by HHS. The ASPR is the primary advisor to the HHS Secretary on matters of bioterrorism and other public health emergencies and, on behalf of the Secretary, ASPR usually coordinates federal resources for emergency response. The National Response Framework (NRF) guides emergency response in general and, in that framework, HHS leads the federal public health and medical response to emergencies.”
In this issue’s What If? article on page 20, we fictionalized some elements of a pneumonic plague outbreak and response for dramatic effect to see how our subject-matter experts would react to those circumstances. However, there are so many variables, it’s impossible, even in the event of a pathogen that serious, to predict the exact level of federal involvement that would take place in real life.
“There are cases of plague that occur every year. They’re noteworthy, but there’s not a federal team that gets called in every time a case is identified,” says Dr. Stephen Redd, director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. “There might be circumstances where the likelihood of the normal route of exposure was not something that’d be the leading hypothesis, and it might be some intentional exposure release where different groups would come into play, including law enforcement. That would be something where the federal involvement would occur more quickly than a natural case of plague.”
Just so we’re clear on departments, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CDC is an agency within the HHS. All public health and medical support for a state is handled by HHS. Within the HHS, the CDC is typically the lead operational element in disease outbreak situations. Just like the FBI or the DEA, their roles are different, but they all work together when called upon to respond to emergencies and investigations.
The National Response Framework
Created in 2008, the NRF was developed by the DHS and is managed by FEMA. It builds upon the National Incident Management System (NIMS), which basically serves as a guide to help government and nongovernmental organizations structure their resources to work together to prepare for, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents. It’s written in such a way that it’s always in effect.
NRF uses NIMS to create a framework for coordination among federal, state, local, and nongovernmental organizations, but it’s intended to be used by the whole community. NIMS coordinates the response structure at emergencies, and NRF governs resources used during and after the designated event or incident. The NRF is mandated and applies to all federal departments and agencies that may be requested to provide assistance. It integrates prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery into one comprehensive plan.
Since no threat exists in isolation and often involves collateral damage, the overall goal is to save lives, protect property and the environment, and restore essential services and infrastructure to help communities return to normal.
In an effort to illustrate how this would look on a macro level, we created a graph to illustrate the likely domino effect a major outbreak or public health emergency might trigger as it relates to the National Response Framework.
[Continued on next post]
https://www.offgridweb.com/survival/government-response-disease-outbreaks-health-emergencies/