Health Dept. works on preparedness

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Preparedness is important, especially when you’re dealing with infectious diseases and other illnesses and natural disasters.

To increase its preparedness, the Van Wert County Health Department conducted a “functional exercise” — a critiqued “practice run” — Monday morning that dealt with the premise of a rare influenza outbreak in the county.

According to the scenario being used for the exercise, a group of Chinese students had visited the area, with a flu outbreak later reported in China. A child then contracted the disease here in Van Wert County after the Chinese students had left.

Local Health Department officials ran the exercise, which was then critiqued by a team led by Bob Rhoades, a former Greenville firefighter and Ohio Health Department employee, who talked to the media and other local officials about the exercise, which involved a child contracting a rare virus and attempts by local health officials control the spread of the disease.

Rhoades said the local exercise went well, although not perfectly — something no one expects in real life.

Health officials followed procedures that would be used if the outbreak was a real one, contacting the hospital and other agencies to control the outbreak, while also providing information to other county officials and the media.

County Sanitarian and Health Department employee Jason Menchhofer was the commander for the incident and conducted a briefing for county officials and media Monday morning. Kim Haas of the Health Department also provided information on the “flu outbreak,” while Emily Barnett, the department’s public information officer, put out news releases throughout the day providing more information on the outbreak and efforts to control it.