Panhandle Health District

                                                            8500 N. Atlas Road         Hayden, Idaho  83835

www.phd1.idaho.gov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                      Date:     April 16, 2010                

Contact:                                                                             Released by: Jeanne Bock, Director                     

Cynthia Taggart

Public Information Officer

(208) 415-5108

(208) 818-7288 (cell)

Volunteers Help Keep Panhandle Residents Healthy

              For four years, volunteers in the North Idaho Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) waited to be needed. They showed up at fairs and exhibitions to teach the public that Medical Reserve Corps volunteers are there to help in emergencies when existing medical and public health resources aren’t enough.

              They dispensed first-aid at sports events. They played roles in exercises designed to sharpen the skills of emergency responders. They responded to activation drills that required nothing more than answering the phone.

              For North Idaho’s MRC, the big year was 2005 when 19 traveled to Louisiana and Texas to help after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. A month later, MRC volunteers helped skin-test more than 1,500 high school students and staff in Coeur d’Alene for tuberculosis.

              Then last fall, the H1N1 influenza virus came to town.

              “They were ready to respond and they did,” says Kerren Vollmer, who coordinated the MRC response in the five northern counties during the recent H1N1 outbreak. “We put out the call for help and they were right there.”

              North Idaho’s MRC is coordinated through the Panhandle Health District (PHD). During Volunteer Appreciation Week, PHD is thanking MRC volunteers publicly and sharing their contributions with the many residents of the five northern counties who benefited from them.

              From October through December 2009, North Idaho’s MRC volunteers contributed 447 hours to vaccinating people of all ages and making sure that the public vaccination clinics ran smoothly.

              “We couldn’t have done it without them,” says Judy Scarborough, North Idaho’s MRC coordinator now. “They were invaluable.”

              Vollmer put the MRC on standby early last fall as reports of H1N1 flu cases multiplied. PHD planned mass vaccination clinics in each of the five northern counties and needed hundreds of volunteers for the clinics to succeed.

              But federally-supplied vaccine first arrived in amounts too small for mass clinics. PHD instead focused its vaccination efforts on children in the schools. The health district hired 70 temporary workers with nursing backgrounds for the school vaccinations. Twenty-six of those workers came from the MRC.

              As more vaccine became available, PHD opened vaccination clinics for the public, but by appointment to avoid making people wait in long lines. Thirteen MRC volunteers stepped up to take appointments via a toll-free phone line.

              For five hours, the volunteers answered phones non-stop as 6,000 people jammed the system hoping to get one of the 1,500 appointments available.

              “It was crazy,” says Vollmer. “And the volunteers were ready to do it again.”

              By the end of the year, 40 MRC volunteers had helped crowds flow quickly and easily through the vaccination clinics. Their friendly service earned repeated praise as the public left the clinics freshly protected from the H1N1 virus.

              Terry LaLiberte, an MRC volunteer from Twin Lakes, volunteered his services throughout the outbreak. He coordinated volunteers in vaccination clinics, verified credentials, controlled crowds and checked people in as they arrived for vaccinations.

              “I felt it was a worthwhile cause,” the retired Oregon chief of police says. “It’s a great way to help the community and be involved without having to be a doctor or nurse.”

              North Idaho’s MRC has 935 volunteers ready to serve in an emergency. Volunteers are medical and non-medical. Scarborough plans orientations and trainings in each of the five counties for new members this summer. She also plans to include the MRC in training exercises and ask, through a needs assessment, what volunteers have done in the past and would like to do.

              “When we needed the MRC, it was there for us and ready,” she says. “You can never predict a disaster.”

              For information on North Idaho’s MRC, visit www.phd1.idaho.gov or call Judy Scarborough at 415-5182.