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PR-01/04/2007: County and Foster City Test County's Ability to Deliver Medicine in an Emergency

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 5, 2007 San Mateo County Health Department Contact: Beverly Thames, (650) 573-3935 SAN MATEO COUNTY AND FOSTER CITY TEST COUNTY'S ABILITY TO DISTRIBUTE MEDICATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY Silver Dragon Drill 2007 Slated for January 25, 2007 REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- On January 25, 2007, as part of the "Silver Dragon" emergency drill, Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), working with the Foster City Fire Department and the San Mateo County Health Department (SMCHD), will go door-to-door delivering seasonal influenza brochures in Neighborhood 2 of Foster City from 9 a.m. to noon. A number of counties in the California Office of Emergency Services Coastal Region will participate. The drill will test each county's ability to receive and distribute large quantities of medicine and medical supplies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). During the Silver Dragon drill, the distribution method of door-to-door delivery will be tested using flu prevention brochures instead of medicine. The SMCHD will monitor the length of time it takes the Foster City CERTs to deliver the brochures to approximately 1,015 households. The SMCHD will test communications for contacting the local SNS receiving, staging and storing warehouse and its own distribution site using satellite phones, handheld radios and HAM radios, while the County Office of Emergency Services assesses its notification and resource requesting capability and its non-traditional forms of communication (such as, HAM radio). San Mateo and Alameda Counties are using a pandemic influenza scenario, while other counties will respond to a simulated anthrax attack. In the event of either a flu pandemic or an anthrax attack, there is a possibility that medications and/or vaccines may be distributed on a mass scale. Local health departments are prepared to work with other local, state and federal officials to deliver medications from local supplies and the SNS to those who may have been exposed. The SNS was originally designed to provide immediate medical care in an emergency event like an explosion or a bioterrorist attack. The CDC learned from Hurricane Katrina that the SNS should be expanded to include the chronic and emergency medical supplies needed to deliver ongoing healthcare to people in shelters. The SNS will be deployed in the event of a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out (such as, a terrorist attack, flu outbreak or earthquake). Once Federal and local authorities agree that the SNS is needed, medicines can be delivered to any state in the U.S. within 12 hours. This exercise will test San Mateo County's existing plans to receive and distribute SNS medicine and medical supplies to local communities as quickly as possible. While waiting for the SNS shipment to arrive, San Mateo County plans to distribute medicine and supplies from its own pharmaceutical stockpile. For more information about the SNS, visit www.bt.cdc.gov/stockpile/index.asp. To learn about the San Mateo County Health Department's pandemic influenza planning efforts, go to www.smhealth.org/pandemicflu. For more information about Foster City's participation in the Silver Dragon exercise, contact the Fire Department at (650) 286-3350 or fire@fostercity.org. ###