Strategic National Stockpile and Training Education Demonstration

May 10th, 2005

The Alabama Department of Public Health and Mobile County Health Department is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Mobile County Emergency Management Agency to test current emergency protocols. This exercise will allow all participating parties to demonstrate established emergency protocols, thereby, allowing each of the partners to assess protocol effectiveness. Following the exercise participants will be able to fine-tune planned interventions, ensuring a more effective response.

You are invited you to observe Alabama's full-scale exercise of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) and Training Education Demonstration (TED) portion of our overall emergency preparedness activities. The SNS is the supply of medicines and related clinic supplies which would be ordered into the state from the CDC should we have a natural disaster or man-made situation involving mass exposures. Such a situation could require that a large number of department staff from across the state be deployed to work in mass clinics, called Mass Prophylaxis Treatment Sites (MPTS) in the affected locality.

On May 11-12, 2005, in Mobile, Alabama and several surrounding counties, the TED exercise will take place. The TED is an actual feet-on-the-ground exercise of SNS deployment, setting up receipt sites, and opening several MPTS sites. CDC sends actual cargo containers with dummy supplies and a team of experts. The response exercise, to which public officials from Mobile County are invited, will be the operation of an MPTS site in the Mobile Civic Center from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will not be necessary for you to stay for the entire exercise. This exercise is closed to the general public and all aspects of the media. The Mobile County Health Department and the Mobile County Emergency Management Agency are hosting the exercise.

If you would like to attend, please contact Lisa Hudley, the Mobile County Health Department's EP Coordinator at 690-8851 or lhudley@mobilecountyhealth.org.

Thank you in advance for your participation and continued dedication to the community.