Pre-course: Disaster Medicine

Emerging diseases in 2015: What to expect, how to face and manage?

Saturday 10 October: 9:00 - 17:30

 

Course Directors

  • Massimo Azzaretto (Italy)
  • Abdo Khoury (France)

Faculty

  • Olivier Hagon (Switzerland)
  • Laurie Mazurik (Canada)
  • Ives Hubloue (Belgium)
  • Jan Semenza (USA)
  • Michele Tizzoni (Italy)

Why register?

Ebola outbreak was a major disaster event these past two years. The severity of the disease, compounded by fear within and beyond the affected countries and population, caused schools, markets, businesses, airline and shipping routes, and borders to close. Tourism shut down, further deepening the blow to struggling economies. What began as a health crisis snowballed into a humanitarian, social, economic and security crisis. In a world of radically increased interdependence, the consequences were felt globally (www.who.int 2015).

We aim to discuss in this workshop what we know about Ebola up today, what where the strategies deployed to halt the outbreak of this disease, how international collaboration plays a key role in this process, and how establishing a worldwide network to share and discuss information, protection measures, management procedures, etc. have an essential role in the fight against emerging diseases. We will also discuss the European response for crisis management and emerging diseases outbreak surveillance. Faculties in this workshop will also show how mathematical modeling offers valuable tools for understanding epidemiological patterns in public health and how several factors, like population growth and urbanization, increasing human connectivity, changing human behavior, increasing antimicrobial drug resistance, as well as environmental changes, present a global challenge for prevention and control and for developing and evaluating evidence for decision making in global and public health.

Simulation activities and practical exercises will end up this full-day course.

Schedule

09:00 Introduction & presentation of the Workshop Massimo Azzaretto, Abdo Khoury
09:30 State of the Art  
  -European surveillance systems: Are we aware? Jan Semenza
  -Ebola outbreak: What don't we know? Olivier Hagon
  -ED resilience: is it just a problem of PPE? Ives Hubloue
11:15 Coffee Break  
11:30 State of the Art  
  -CBRNECC: A spontaneous international network Laurie Mazurik
  -Modelling in infectious disease: what is the meaning? Michele Tizzoni
12:30 Lunch  
13:30 Simulation and training  
14:30 Coffee Break  
14:45 Biohazard Exercise Michele Tizzoni
16:30 Debrief and Discussion  
17:00 Wrap-Up