AWWA SOURCES59173

The 1993 Cryptosporidium illness outbreak in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the morerecent E. coli tragedy in Walkerton, Canada underline the need for water utilities toestablish and maintain effective partnerships with local public health and emergencyplanning agencies. In San Antonio, Texas local water utilities working with their LocalEmergency Planning Committee (LEPC) were able to participate in a simulatedwaterborne illness outbreak and tabletop exercise with local public health professionalsand regulatory agency officials.This paper reports how a simulated disease outbreak, "Don't Drink the Water", wasdesigned as a training exercise to introduce water and reuse water operators to basicepidemiological techniques used by public health officials in the investigation of asuspected waterborne illness outbreak. Working in teams, participants were providedinformation on individuals experiencing symptoms of a waterborne illness. Each teamincluded water operators, public health sanitarians and regulatory agency professionals.Participants used data from patient histories to construct an epidemiological curve toapproximate the time of exposure and to identify the most likely source of the illness as apicnic. Using basic epidemiological techniques to calculate specific food and beverageattack rates, it was possible to eliminate contaminated water as the cause of the illnessand to identify shrimp consumed during a picnic as the probable source.

Product Details

Edition:

Vol. - No.

Published:

01/11/2004

Number of Pages:

6

File Size:

1 file , 230 KB