DUSTIN

RESPOND TO THIS DISCUSSION POST IN 150 WORDS OR MORE . SIMPLY STATING I AGREE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION BY ADDING NEW INFORMATION OR A DIFFERENT VIEW “For this week’s discussion, we were asked to discuss a personal scenario when controls were used in an attempt to solve a health problem in a community. Additionally, we were asked to answer the question of how rapid needs assessments are used during disasters and emergencies. I would imagine that for most of us the common example we have is some aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic response. For my personal scenario, I am going to use another example so we do not all end up with similar responses.

For most of the year, in 2012, I was deployed to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The base was home to thousands of U.S. and coalition forces at the time. Getting sick while serving overseas is no big deal, it happens nearly every time I have done it however; on this deployment, things were a little different. Suddenly one morning while getting ready to go to work, I started exhibiting extremely violent symptoms of what I thought was food poisoning, I will spare you the details but it was as bad as you could possibly imagine, and its onset was very sudden. I thought I would give it a while and see if I got better but I did not. This went on for two days while I tried to struggle through it; a decision I would regret when I eventually passed out and woke up in a hospital.

When I woke up, after receiving several large bags of saline, both medical providers and Office of Special Investigations agents would pay me visits and question me about my habits in the days prior to getting ill. They were specifically interested in what I had consumed in the dining facility. I eventually found out that these providers and agents were conducting surveillance on nearly two hundred military members and civilian workers who ate at a specific facility and came down with the same symptoms at nearly the same time; some victims were even worse than I was. At the end of the investigation, it was determined that a Taliban fighter had coerced an Afghan dining facility worker to poison our food with a pink powdered rodenticide. Luckily for me, I did not ingest high enough concentrations to cause any more serious symptoms than extreme dehydration and the loss of bodily function control. The surveillance and investigation teams even found the poison hidden in the worker’s smoking area behind the building. It was determined to have been mixed in with cole slaw which I, and every other victim, had consumed in the days prior. The rapid investigation conducted after realizing the large scope of the illnesses quickly determined the cause which solved the problem and emphasized the need for new safeguards and better practices in monitoring Local Nationals who worked in food service on the base.

Rapid needs assessments are used during disasters and emergencies to quickly determine what is needed to protect lives, property, and the environment. It is a quick assessment based on minimal, but factual, information. This sort of assessment is simply designed to get supplies and resources to those who need them as soon as possible. A more detailed assessment will occur much later and will determine all of the other details which will need to be studied and known to affect recovery and, if possible, prevention of a similar disaster in the future.”

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