UTMC launches travel registry for Ebola and other disease prevention

UT recently launched a travel registry for students, staff and faculty that will be traveling out of the country.

Anyone going out of the country is asked to fill out the registry so the university’s health centers can determine if they should undergo a health screening upon their return.

The registry was launched in light of the Ebola outbreak, but these precautions will cover more than just Ebola.

“We will use the registry on an ongoing basis as a public health initiative to keep our community safe here at the university,” said Heather Lorenz, director of Environmental Health and Radiation Safety. “We want this to be a way that will be able to help us to not only monitor for potential signs of Ebola, but also to help identify any other outbreaks that could occur in the future.”

The registry requires people to fill out their domestic contact information, travel dates and locations as well as if they have come into contact with anyone from West Africa.

UT has also implemented new procedures at the University of Toledo Medical Center (UTMC) in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an effort to be prepared for a potential case of Ebola.

One of the ways Lorenz said preparations were made is through a drill required of hospitals state-wide. Each Ohio hospital was required to perform a drill in which a theoretical patient with Ebola would come to the hospital.

“Here at the UTMC we have been preparing for that event using our incident command system which basically details out how we would approach this kind of incident,” Lorenz said. “We have also had meetings with our staff so they know how to protect themselves as well as the medical operations portion for how they would treat the patient.”

According to the State of Ohio Emergency Operations Center, there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in the state of Ohio. However, UT is taking every precaution to make sure that UT and the surrounding communities do not worry about the possible spread of the virus, Lorenz said.

“If an Ebola case shows up, it affects everyone who has been in contact with the victim and it sort of ripples out. The registry is a preventative measure even if there is not necessarily an imminent risk of spreading the disease,” said Jon Strunk, assistant vice president of university communications.

Some students think the new travel registry will be very effective. One such student is Jordan Johnson, a second-year majoring in new media.

“I think that it will prevent the spread of the disease by keeping track of any possible risk factors,” Johnson said. “People are afraid and taking this counter measure just to keep track of the people going in and out of the country even if it is not necessary is still a good idea because you can never be too safe.”

Some students, however, are not completely on board with the travel registry, such as Matthew Kline, a third-year majoring in engineering.

“I think that it is a good and a bad thing,” Kline said. “It could potentially help to make sure that certain diseases do not spread, but at the same time I think that the university might go too far with it. We already have seen in the news that people have been quarantined for long amounts of time due to the possibility of Ebola. I think that UT might blow things out of proportion and be too cautious with the information that they get on the registry.”

Besides all of the precautions that UT has implemented on campus, one of the biggest challenges that UT still faces is informing people of the facts about Ebola because of how much false information there is about the disease.

“People have this misconception that this is something that is really easy for the general public to pick up,” said Kristopher Brickman, chairman of the department of medicine. “It is not an airborne virus. You have to come into contact with secretions or fluids from a patient. Being in the same room, being in the same city, a restaurant, a plane, even if they had Ebola is not going to give it to them.”

However, there are still precautions that people can take if they are worried about possibly contracting the virus.

“Some of the symptoms of the flu are similar to the symptoms of Ebola and there is concern at a lot of hospitals that as flu season comes and people come down with fevers — and because of the recent Ebola scare — people are going to think of the worst case scenario,” Strunk said.

To remedy this, Strunk recommended that people should get flu shots.

For more informational about the UT travel registry contact [email protected]