Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases, Part Three : Leadership 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 am Dr. Carina Blackmore
and Im the State Public Health Veterinarian for
the Department of Health. Today I am going to talk about the importance of partnering
and looking outside the box when you prepare for a bioterrorism events,
especially for preparing for zoonotic and vector borne disease events of a
bioterrorism nature. And as a example of this is the 2001 anthrax
attack when a lot of the human clinical labs werent fully prepared too
handle the specimens that were collected during that outbreak. But we have
a number of anthrax experts in the veterinarian community in our country
and they then were able to step in and provide a lot of expertise in the
area and help out in the investigation.
There are a lot of areas in your community that may be
focus for zoonotic disease transmission and Im calling those areas
hotspots. One thing you can do locally to prepare for zoonotic disease
outbreaks or bioterrorism events is to find out where they actually are.
Find out where the hotspots for mosquito borne diseases are, where the
rodent infestations occur, where people come in contact with wildlife,
where your veterinarian clinics are, if you have a large livestock operations,
if you have a humane society, or animal control operation in your community
where a zoonotic disease transmission may take place. Its also good to
know then and good to learn about the risks associated with those areas.
Where would you most likely to expect a zoonotic disease outbreak to start?
Knowing that of course then will help you plan your response.
In particular, lets look at three hotspot types, vector
intensive areas where, for example, you can find a lot of mosquitoes or
rodents. Stay in contact with your mosquito control folks and also you can
work with your community to make it safe and prevent vector borne diseases
both from mosquitoes and rodents by removing stagnant water or rodent proof
buildings for example.
Its also important to keep farms and livestock
concentration in mind because attacks against livestock can be very, very
costly for the U.S.
economy. And also if you have zoonotic disease outbreaks in these areas the
workers may be the first ones that come in contact with those outbreaks and
also the first ones that may get sick.
So try to work with these farms and other areas. We have
regional DACS veterinarians in the state that you can work with. Together
with those try to approach the farms and train the employees on zoonotic
diseases both the human science of these diseases and animal disease
science and how to prevent them. And give them your phone numbers and make
sure they are aware of the fact of the importance of their histories in
tracking these outbreaks. It may be a little to difficult to work with the
farms, because when we have large zoonotic outbreaks or large outbreaks in
livestock herds one important way of withdrawing them is to call and
quarantine them and that may be very costly for these farms. But try to get
to know the people so that they trust you and they realize and try to
convey to them that we certainly will try to work with time as much as
possible, we both have the same goal. We dont regulate them we just want
to work with them.
Like I mentioned before, veterinarians are very
important when it comes to bioterrorism preparedness and we know a lot
about bioterrorism agents, many of them are zoonotic, and you should get to
know your veterinarians in your community as well. Just like a human
clinician may be the first to notices a human disease outbreak,
veterinarian clinics may be the first to notice a zoonotic disease outbreaks
that can be transmitted to people. Try to find out where the veterinary
clinics are in your area and what kind of zoonotic diseases that they might
be dealing with, and build relationships with them.
A good example of, again, where veterinarians played a really
good important in discovering a natural disease outbreak was during the
first phase of the West Nile outbreak. It
was actually discovered by a veterinary pathologist who was a veterinarian at
the Bronx zoo. And she started to notice
there were a lot of corvids dying on her property and she was very worried
about her zoo birds and they may become ill from this unknown illness. She pursued
diagnosis and was able to find out the birds were dying of Flavivirus at
the same time people in New York City were coming down with St. Louis
encephalitis, which is what they thought was happening at the time, and
thats how the connection was made that we were dealing with a new virus,
West Nile virus that than caused both veterinary and human pathology.
So how do you best reach out to veterinarians? Provide
them with handouts with all the contact number that they might need. The
state veterinarian in AG for example, AG law enforcement, USDA, and of
course the numbers to the local health departments.
Try to include them in training scenarios that you have.
You also might want to try to encourage veterinarians and clinicians to
work together. Again with zoonotic diseases we really need to work hand in
hand, medical doctors and veterinarians.
So in summary its very important to connect with people
that are associated with hotspots in your community, try to get to know who
they and partner with them. And then of course working with them, its
important to do risk assessment of how important are these hotspots in your
community as a potential bioterrorism hazard. And finally, when you have
the risks assessments for your particular community, make sure that you add
them to your countys emergency response plan. It should be brief and
readable, and it should also cover very specific information relating to
vector borne and zoonotic outbreaks and how they might occur in your area.
Also include what preparation your county has done for vector borne and
zoonotic disease outbreaks and what kind of partnerships that you put in
place.
So why do we emphasize partners here? Throughout this
presentation weve been talking about partnering and the importance of
partnering. Well when you have an emergency or a bioterrorism event you
cannot get enough resources. You need to tap into all the resources you
might have in your community to deal with the specifics for example of
vector control, the specifics of the animal diseases that are connected to
the zoonotic disease outbreaks. We need all the bodies and hands that we
can get our hands on during these outbreaks as resources to make sure that
we can control the outbreaks as fast as possible.
So in conclusion, it is very important that you include
vector borne diseases and zoonotic diseases in you local response plan. And
we here at the state health office are very glad to review those plans and
provide input to those plans. It is also very important that you work with
and partner with everybody in your community that may be associated with
hotspots of a zoonotic disease on an ongoing basis and also when it comes
to bioterrorism planning. And thank you very much for your attention.
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