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Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases, Part Two : Preparedness Overview

This is a full transcript of the online presentation. For the presentation itself, go here.

Presented by:
Carina Blackmore, D.V.M., Ph.D.
State Public Health Veterinarian
Division of Environmental Health
Contact Number: 850-245-4732

Hello I’m Dr. Carina Blackmore, I’m the state public health Veterinarian for the Department of Health and today I will be talking too you about preparedness.

What are we doing here in the Department of Health and what are other people doing in the state of Florida too prepare for a bioterrorism attacks. One of our main partners, when it comes to zoonotic and vector borne diseases, is the Department of Agriculture the Division of Animal Industry. They’re the main agency in this state that are responsible for diagnosing animal diseases. They also are very helpful to us in public health because they control state quarantines and animal movements in connection with such quarantines. And is natural they are then the lead agency when it comes too animal bioterrorism preparedness and response. We also work very closely with mosquito control; they are of course controlling mosquitoes both thru larval control and adulticiding. It’s very important when it comes to bioterrorism preparedness you get to know your mosquitoes control staff and also too find out what their local plans are cause the mosquito control districts in the state of Florida are controlled locally.  Another thing that I would like you too look at is: do they really have enough capacity to respond to a large outbreak both naturally occurring outbreak or a bioterrorism outbreak? Do they have enough capacity is there something that we as a public health agency can do too build that capacity?

Within the Division of Environmental Health we have several programs that are involved in bioterrorism preparedness and zoonotic vector borne disease preparedness and we have the zoonotic and vector and disease surveillance and investigation program here which works very closely with both laboratories and a lot of different agencies in the state on a variety of zoonotic and vector borne disease issues. We also have a program that does food borne disease investigations and water borne disease investigations, and we have a program that deals with biological waste such as mass animal casualties.

So what can you do? First of all, of course, you need to look at yourself. Make sure that you wear mosquito repellant when you go outside to not get bitten by mosquitoes. Know who we are in the Division of Environmental Health that deals with zoonotic and vector borne diseases. And also know what are response plan looks like and how you can integrate with that response plan.

Surveillance is very important when it comes too planning. It’s something that you can do on a day to day basis. Are normal surveillance program in the Department of Health in the past is we would receive reports from doctors, but we can also seek out that information by actively soliciting information if we need to, which we did during the anthrax outbreak for example. In the zoonotic and vector borne disease program we both do animal and human surveillance we work with our partners for the animal piece and coordinate the human surveillance.

As part of the surveillance and investigation piece, of course, is an important assessment of risk. We don’t want to forget the patient that is involved when we have human cases, but what we do in public health is to focus on what is the risk to others: how can we prevent disease from occurring in the entire population? So investigate them, we look for exposures. Is the exposure natural? Or is this a sign that we have something strange occurring like a bioterrorism event? Is the person that’s been infected someone you would expect would get the disease? Is the bacteria or virus that’s involved something that we would normally see in Florida? There are a lot of things that you can find out by just interviewing patients.

And, of course, the other thing that we do in public health is then to try too develop messages and develop knowledge as to how to prevent that disease from occurring and others from getting the illnesses. Then when we have that information in hand we communicate. We communicate with physicians, veterinarians, mosquito control, anyone that wants too listen, and the public as well.

It’s very important to communicate. Make sure that your local physicians and veterinarians know your numbers. Get to know the folks in the other agencies that are involved with zoonotic diseases and vector borne diseases. The folks in DACS the folks in Fish and Wildlife, they have regional staff get to know who they are. We also have federal agencies, like USDA in our, state that have field staff that we can use if we need too. Familiarize yourself with procedures for getting access to such resources.

Make sure you share our response plan and your local response plan with your local stake holders and even more importantly, if you can, develop them jointly. Many in our communities still need education about the importance of zoonotic diseases and where they fit in when it comes to bioterrorism. That actually stake holders that may be working with animals and vectors so make sure you reach out to them as well.

So in conclusion, it is very important to get prepared. Keep the surveillance information coming and also make sure too work with everyone else that’s involved in zoonotic and vector borne diseases surveillance and response. And thank you very much for you attention.