Acting Director,
Office of Force Readiness and Deployment, Office of the Surgeon General
Global Operations
OFRD is actively participating in the U.S. Government’s planning and response to the cholera outbreak in Haiti. November’s on-call teams and Roster D have been notified for possible response to the event, ranging from Applied Public Health Teams to patient care teams. Additional details are available at the OFRD Web site (http://ccrf.hhs.gov/ccrf).
The Continuing Promise 2010 (CP10) shipboard training/humanitarian assistance mission continues aboard the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7). Operations are ongoing in Guyana, with Suriname as the final host nation to be visited this year for CP10.
Planning and preparations for additional training/humanitarian assistance missions in Fiscal Year 2011 are in progress. Requests for volunteers and mission descriptions will be disseminated as details are finalized.
Response Teams and Operations
OFRD had officers deployed for every day of Fiscal Year 2010 and enters November with operations including teams deployed in support of a suicide cluster support mission, a potential behavioral health support mission as well as ongoing support to the Haiti recovery. In addition, OFRD is working with the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response to review the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Prescripted Mission Assignments and the Department of Health and Human Services ESF-8 Playbooks including Pandemic Influenza and Integration of Volunteers to refine and enhance the role of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.
OFRD will begin quarterly response team recruiting for Tier I and Tier II response teams in December. A general announcement will be sent on the OFRD Listserv that will describe the positions and teams. Interested officers will receive information and nomination packages from OFRD at that time.
Readiness
The final activities associated with the transition of immunization tracking to the Medical Affairs Branch are nearing completion. The most important of these began last week when OFRD contacted individual officers who had remaining exceptional issues with documentation. OFRD determined that reaching out to individual officers with such exceptional issues was necessary to reach a steady state and to be able to maintain our commitment to officers in this process. Any other readiness-related questions should continue to be directed to OFRD@hhs.gov.
Training
OFRD will again be a partner in the Integrated Medical, Public Health, Preparedness and Response Training Summit. Please see the Call for Abstracts at http://teams.hhs.gov/conference/
As always, thank you for your service and commitment to protecting, promoting and advancing the health and safety of the Nation.
 |
 |
 |
HHS, Office of Public Health and Science |