Lunch Keynote: Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health and State Health Officer
By Erin Geoffroy
“Sometimes, we are tested,” said Brenda Fitzgerald, looking across a room filled with public health officials, scholars and students from throughout Georgia. Fitzgerald, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health and state health officer, was referring to the Ebola panic that shook the country last fall.
Between March 2014 and September 2015, more than 28,000 people were diagnosed with the potentially deadly Ebola virus, nearly all of them in three West African Counties. International travel restrictions snapped into place and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta became one of only five United States airports where flights from Africa were allowed to land.
Although two Ebola patients arrived at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on August 2, public panic did not break out until October. That was when a Liberian man died in a Dallas hospital and two nurses who cared of him were infected.
Georgia’s leaders knew they needed a plan Governor Nathan Deal quickly established an Ebola response team that included Fitzgerald, top law enforcement officials, the state medical examiner, funeral directors, and other key groups. The Department of Public Health sent letters to 40,000 physicians, providing guidelines for handling suspected Ebola patients.
Having a single information source for everyone was crucial. “Right from the beginning, we had a single number: 866-PUB-HEALTH,” said Fitzgerald.
Worried consumers could call for information. Hospitals called to report any suspected cases and to report how many beds they had available in case of an outbreak.
State leaders created several tools that would be useful if the spread of Ebola becomes a real threat in Georgia. Fever is an indication of infection, and one of these was a smartphone app that medical personnel could use to send twice daily temperature readings to the department of health.
Fitzgerald is proud of the state’s efforts during the crisis. A legacy of the effort is a regional plan for coordinating outbreak response and transportation, which she said is now a model for other states.
Fitzgerald beamed when she said, “I believe that everyone was tested and found formidable.”
