Town to team up for health issues
By Amanda J. Mantone/ Staff Writer
Thursday, March 9, 2006
Medfield is signing on to a mutual aid agreement that will partner the town with surrounding communities in preparation for a large-scale health disaster.
"I felt it was in the town's best interest," said Kathy Schapira, a member of the town's board of health and a registered nurse who also works as an emergency planner for seven other towns in Massachusetts. She presented the mutual aid agreement to selectmen last week. "I believe in it, and it's good for the town."
The mutual aid agreement, is an inter-municipal state document that binds towns in several regions into voluntary cooperation should a health emergency arise. There's no membership cost for participating, and towns are not help liable if they refuse to help another town in the agreement.
"If another town asked Medfield for help, and said 'Can we have your health agent, we have an infectious disease issue,' Medfield can say yes or no," Schapira said. "They're not liable if they say no, no matter what happens. Medfield can say yes, but lets say the following day we need our health agent back, we can say we need them, even though we originally thought we could lend them for three days."
She said one example of a time the agreement could be used is in a hepatitis A outbreak.
"Let's say we find six cases at a restaurant, and 1,000 people want to get vaccinated. We can't do that in a little room, so all towns have to have an emergency dispensing site. If it's something infectious, obviously it will be a little more difficult," she said. "We need to communicate to the public if they don't know, and we have special high-risk populations. When we're all working together, that's called the co-op."
She said it's an important agreement because it allows towns to help each other in the absence of a state-declared emergency.
"The hepatitis A example wouldn't be a state emergency. Anything that affects your town on a large scale doesn't mean the state has an emergency, it means your town has an emergency," she said. "To be on board with the mutual aid agreement is in the town's best interest."
Nearly half the towns in the state have signed it, though the governor's goal is to get 100 percent on board. Any emergency would be managed by a regional incident commander, who would work with each town's board of health or public health department.
The agreement is before town counsel now, and selectmen said they will formally sign it at a future meeting.
"Everybody is going to benefit from the very beginning," Schapira said.
Amanda J. Mantone can be reached at 781-433-8354 or amantone@cnc.com
