CDP to host ‘Highly Infectious Disease’-themed training week

The Center for Domestic Preparedness will host a Highly Infectious Disease-themed Training Week August 27-31 on its campus in Anniston, Ala.

The training week will provide students with the best practices, knowledge, and skills for triaging, transporting, treating, isolating and managing patients with highly infectious diseases.

It will revolve around the CDP’s Barrier Precautions and Controls for Highly Infectious Disease course, which trains healthcare workers in basic barrier precautions, infection-control procedures and use of personal protective equipment when treating, managing and transferring infected patients. The CDP developed the course in the wake of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when that disease spread to the United States via travelers infected with the virus and led to the infection of two American nurses treating an Ebola patient.

This year, officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are battling another outbreak of Ebola, which has a total of 38 confirmed and 16 probable cases, with 33 deaths as of July 24, according to the World Health Organization.

The CDP’s Highly Infectious Disease-themed training week will culminate with an exercise featuring a simulated outbreak and mass casualty scenario.  This four- to five-hour-long capstone exercise will put students to the test, requiring them to don protective gear, treat and manage ‘patients,’ follow infection control-barrier guidelines and manage isolation protocols, while also protecting fellow healthcare workers and lessening further outbreaks.