Warner Brothers has recently released the movie Contagion, a fictional drama that portrays CDC and other U.S. and international public health partners responding to an emerging infectious disease outbreak.
"The movie realistically portrays how important it is that we all join in preparedness efforts by being ready for all the different risks that face us so we can deal with and mitigate them -- not just natural disasters or bioterrorism, but also things like toxins in food, radiation and emerging infectious diseases," says Northwest Georgia Public Health's Dr. Wade Sellers.
When asked to respond to the inevitable question about the plot of the movie, "Could this really happen?," Sellers is compelled to say, "Not only could it happen, CDC scientists and public health workers right here in northwest Georgia are working 24/7 to find out if it's happening right now."
"The film highlights how public health works every hour of every day to protect the health of all people in the U.S. to prepare us for more extreme threats like SARS and H1N1." According to Sellers, public health workers are constantly trying to recognize disease patterns and improve the public health community's ability to respond to health threats.
"Public health," Sellers adds, "plays a key role in homeland security by maintaining the ability to detect and respond to outbreaks as well as natural and man-made disasters."
However, according to Sellers, the film provides "a less than complete picture of the extensive role that state and local public health agencies would play in responding to a major disease pandemic."
While noting recent budget cuts are threatening the ability of state and local health departments to respond as well as the movie portrays, Sellers says "state and local public health departments are the first responders when disease threats occur, and it is their initial investigations that help CDC quickly assist them at the local level."
"With fire departments and the police," Sellers observes, "you can see people rushing off to put out fires or respond to violence or theft or what have you. When public health practitioners do their jobs well, you don't hear about it."
Sellers reminds "it's just a movie, and it's not a documentary, so there will be things with which one can quibble, absolutely. For example, the timeline for deploying a vaccine is a little shorter than it would typically be. But by and large, it is a plausible scenario -- and it's also something in the way of a wake-up call."
In Sellers' view, the film will certainly cause people to think about critical aspects of how public health responds to an emerging infectious disease, including "How transmissible is an agent? What is a mortality rate? How do we go about tracing individuals who are at risk and trying to make sure that we can mitigate that risk?"
"What's involved with trying to address a new infectious agent? How do you make a vaccine? How do you distribute a vaccine? How do you deal with issues of civil rights? How do you deal with scarcities -- not only of medications, but also of goods and services and water and food?"
Over the last ten years, since the events of September and October 2001, a major effort has been underway to strengthen the emergency response capabilities of state and local public health.
During that time, Georgia has received approximately $373 million in grant funding from the CDC, for the purpose of enhancing public health's emergency response capacity. That includes nearly $15 million specifically targeted for pandemic influenza preparedness and response activities, including the state's response to the H1N1 pandemic of 2009.
Some of the things this funding has paid for include:
· development of enhanced emergency response plans, at both the state and local level, including specific plans for hazards like an influenza pandemic;
· identification and staffing of positions needed to implement those plans;
· development of a system for mass dispensing of vaccines and medications during an emergency;
· enhancement of Georgia's already robust public health lab capabilities;
· further enhancement of the state's already widely-recognized expertise in conducting infectious disease investigations, at both the state and local level
· enhanced capacity to handle large numbers of patients in our hospital system;
· adoption of and training in use of the Incident Command System to respond to emergency, so that our efforts will better mesh with those of law enforcement and other emergency response organizations;
· enhanced technology for emergency communication between and among public health agencies, hospitals and other
· responders; and
· routine and ongoing testing of public health's response system, through both formal exercises and response to real world events.
For more information on how public health works to keep America safe and how you can join in by being prepared, particularly during September, which is National Preparedness Month, please visit http://www.bt.cdc.gov/
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