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Local officials will critique response to ebola scare last fall
AUSTINTOWN
The Mahoning County District Board of Health will draw upon its own experience dealing with the Ebola scare last fall, and the greater hands-on experience of the Summit County Board of Health, in preparing a plan to handle the disease and other special pathogens should an outbreak occur.
The keynote speaker for an Ebola-preparedness conference, tentatively scheduled for July 30 at the Boardman Holiday Inn, is Dr. Margo Erme, D.O., medical director the Summit County health board.
Joseph Diorio, director of the Mahoning County health department’s community health division, said Dr. Erme and others from the Summit County health department will discuss how they monitored people who were under investigation for potentially having been in contact with someone with Ebola.
According to the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention, Ebola is a rare and deadly disease caused by infection with a strain of Ebola virus. The virus causes severe bleeding, organ failure, and can lead to death. The 2014 Ebola epidemic was the largest in history, affecting multiple countries in West Africa.
Summit County’s experience was much more significant than what the Mahoning County health department had to deal with, Diorio said.
The Mahoning County Health Board approved paying the Holiday Inn up to $1,134 for the conference.
After remarks from Dr. Erme, Mahoning County Health Department community partners, including representatives of area hospitals, the Youngstown City Health District, first responders, and law enforcement, will participate in breakout sessions to discuss how they responded to the Ebola scare, what worked and what could have been done better.
Topics will include personal protective equipment, medical transportation, quarantine enforcement, human remains disposal, alternate housing, and disseminating information to the public and health officials.
“The information we get from the work groups is what we will put in our Ebola-response plan. We’re taking it to next step to have something in place on local perspective,” Diorio said.
Basic things have to be worked using information from the conference.
For example, he said, if there is a person with signs or symptoms and they are quarantined, it would be necessary to have alternate housing for them or their family, arrange for food delivery, and determine how and who will enforce quarantines.
The county health department has received about $40,019 in federal funds to develop the preparedness plan, Diorio said.