Training exercise preps YSU faculty, students in anthrax response

YOUNGSTOWN

Nursing faculty and students and health-clinic staff members at Youngstown State University and representatives of the Mahoning County Health Department responded to an anthrax attack on campus.

Don’t be alarmed, however. It was just a training exercise.

During the Friday exercise, the antibiotics Ciprofloxacin and Doxycycline, represented by candy, were given to members of the university community, who would start taking the medications within 48 hours after their exposure to anthrax to avoid getting sick.

“If there ever was a disaster, we would be much more prepared for it just from having this exercise,” said Maria Melfe of Austintown, a nursing student.

“We’ll have a lot more confidence if anything did ever happen” because of the information provided by the exercise, she said.

In the mock disaster, the university was a “closed unit,” providing the antibiotics to university-affiliated people instead of having them wait in line at county-run open points of dispensing, or PODs.

“The more closed PODs that we can do and help facilitate with different organizations, the less people are going to be standing in general-population lines,” Joe Diorio, director of community health at the county health department, told the students.

The scenario was a small explosion that had occurred Thursday at the university’s student center.

Read more about the scenario and the exercise in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.