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Champaign Health District is seeking emergency volunteers

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By Shelia Hiddleson, Contributing Writer Updated 10:29 PM Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Champaign Health District staff is prepared to respond and care for our community in the event of an emergency or public health disaster. Over the past five years, we have worked with our community partners to develop response plans and exercise these plans to deal with biological events, pandemic influenza, anthrax, mercury and other public health related manmade or natural disasters.

One of the charges to all local health districts is the ability to provide immunizations or medications to the entire county within 48 hours should an emergency occur for which this would be warranted. In the event of a pandemic flu, immunizations would need to be given to all of the priority groups identified by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. The staff of the Champaign Health District numbers at only 22; to provide immunizations to almost 40,000 residents would be impossible.

That is where you can help. The health district is responsible to coordinate the Medical Reserve Corps or the county working with the Citizen Emergency Response Teams and the Emergency Management Agency to assure that volunteer needs are met in a disaster. The MRC is part of the Citizen Corps, a national network of volunteers dedicated to ensuring hometown security.

MRC units are community-based and function as a way to locally organize and utilize volunteers who want to donate their time and expertise. MRC volunteers include medical and public health professionals. Other community members, such as interpreters, chaplains, office workers and legal advisers, can fill other vital support positions during planned events or emergency events.

If you would like to be a volunteer or learn more about MRC, please contact Michele Carnes-Melvin at the health district at (937) 484-1605. To learn more about MRC, visit www.medicalreservecorps.gov.

Shelia Hiddleson is the  Champaign Health Health  commissioner.

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