 |
| UNM Will Train Rural and City Docs on Bio-Terrorism Emergency Care |
September 17, 2003 |
| |
| Washington, DC – Doctors at the University of New Mexico will beef up their bio-terrorism training program with a federal grant announced today by Congresswoman Heather Wilson. UNM’s Emergency Medicine Department will receive $1,140,565 from the Health and Human Services Department to improve bio-terrorism training for frontline health care practitioners like EMT’s, paramedics, and Emergency Room physicians, nurses, and technicians. The University also hopes to utilize their existing TeleHealth infrastructure to make the training available to doctors and first-responders in rural New Mexico, including Indian tribes like the Navajo nation.
The $1.1 million represents the first-year federal investment in a two-year program.
“This funding is significant because it will allow us to provide continuing education to health care professionals not specifically targeted by existing bio-terrorism training programs,” says Dr. Michael Richards, from UNM’s Department of Emergency Medicine. Richards submitted the original proposal for the funding.
Wilson agreed, saying the distance-learning component will help UNM spread their expertise to all corners of the state. “This will improve access to bio-terrorism and domestic-preparedness training program to first responders in New Mexico. By taking advantage of technology, this will enable UNM to share their knowledge with all corners of New Mexico.”
TeleHealth is a UNM-established system that provides access, over distance, to medical care, health-related education and administrative functions through the use of appropriate technologies. The training program developed through this funding will include traditional classroom lectures, but will also involve two-way training sessions with people far from Albuquerque.
Richards adds that the training could also extend to veterinarians. Livestock, pets, and other animals could be an indicator of the presence of a bio-terror event. The program has four main training goals. UNM, using this federal funding, will seek to enable first responders and frontline medical staff:
· to recognize indications of a terrorist event or other public health emergency.
· to meet the acute care needs of patients, including geriatric and other vulnerable populations,
to rapidly and effectively alert public health system, at the state or even national level; and
to participate in coordinated and multi-disciplinary responses to terrorist events.
“Our country recently paused to remember the two-year anniversary of the most severe terrorist attack in our nation’s history,” says Wilson. “That really was a wake-up call, and we’ve responded by strengthening our nation’s defenses. This funding is part of our effort to strengthen our public health care system. We’ve got to be ready.”
—END— |
|
|
|