CHCC grateful for outside help in wake of Typhoon Soudelor

The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is grateful to regional agencies that have assisted the CNMI in its health response assistance in the aftermath of Tyhoon Soudelor.

“Even if our own personnel at the CHCC had been spared from the disaster, we knew we needed support from those with disaster recovery experience to quickly get in front of immediate, emerging, and continuing health needs during these difficult months after Typhoon Soudelor,” CHCC chief executive officer Esther Muña said.

“I’m humbled to see such a strong and rapid response to our need from these organizations,” she added.

After Typhoon Soudelor ravaged Saipan on Aug. 2 and 3, Muña, along with the hospital’s incident command center, reached out to regional partners.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, and the World Health Organization responded quickly to CHCC’s call and flew in off-island personnel to give their assistance.

Epidemiologists from these organizations augmented the Division of Public Health’s efforts to strengthen assessment, surveillance, and response to accommodate the post-disaster health needs of the community. The first priority went to those in typhoon shelters and a community needs assessment was rapidly conducted.

Within two and a half days of landing on Saipan, Dr. Paul White, a senior communicable disease epidemiologist for SPC, developed a rapid needs assessment tool, assembled and trained a team of local volunteers, and launched the community survey in the field. To conduct the community health needs assessment, the assessment team visited 110 households throughout Saipan.

Margarita Aldan, director for DPH, said the health needs assessment it is an essential resource to inform the priorities of the public health action moving forward for a healthy recovery from Soudelor.

Additionally, the report emphasizes the need for surveillance, risk communication, and education to address food and water-borne diarrheal disease and increased awareness of hygiene and non-scratching behavior to avoid rash.

White also thanked the volunteer team, saying “their diligence, motivation and enthusiasm was essential in ensuring we met the challenging time lines and data collection targets required to make the community needs assessment successful.”