October 24, 2007

Hot Meals and Flu Shots

Meals On Wheels Participates in Flu Exercise

Today a select group of Meals On Wheels recipients will receive a free flu shot along with their daily meal delivery.  The Central District Health Department (CDHD) is staging a Public Health Preparedness exercise to test its plans to serve special populations in the event of a health emergency.  The Meals On Wheels program uses two new Mealstar HCF (hot/cold/frozen) trucks to deliver meals to some clients in Ada County.  CDHD nurses are riding along with those drivers to provide clients with a free seasonal flu shot.

In the event of a real public health emergency, like an influenza pandemic, the health district would be required to provide vaccine to special populations like the homebound elderly served by the Meals On Wheels program.  This is the first time the program has attempted to vaccinate clients in their homes against the seasonal flu.

The exercise is an extension of a large-scale exercise staged October 15th at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.  The goal with that exercise was to vaccinate as many of the employees of the medical center as possible in a limited amount of time.  The special flu clinic managed to successfully vaccinate over 1100 Saint Alphonsus employees and about 50 CDHD employees, who were working during the exercise.

Testing the health district Emergency Response plans helps the district to refine and fine-tune the plans so that when a real emergency situation arises district employees will be ready to respond at a moment’s notice.