Volunteers needed for medical emergency centers.

By Khari Johnson
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

That's the idea behind a federal program organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 72 metropolitan areas nationwide, including Broward and Palm Beach counties, in which local agencies or volunteers dispense medication and information in the event of a major public health emergency.

Plans vary city to city, but hundreds of volunteers and Broward County Health Department employees are set up to operate 75 strategically placed points of distributing, or PODs, around the county, some public, some private. More than 5,000 volunteers are being sought in each county. In Broward County, about 55 percent to 60 percent of the needed volunteers have stepped forward. In Palm Beach County, only a few hundred have signed up.

In both counties, emergency officials are making efforts to create private PODs at churches, colleges, businesses and homeowner associations. In Broward, one university and five businesses have signed agreements. Palm Beach County expects to have 25 agreements by October, all with condos or gated communities.

Adam Yanckowitz, director of the office of Emergency Operations for the Broward Health Department, insists that Broward could fill in gaps by asking city employees across the county to volunteer.

"There would be a lot of just-in-time training," Yanckowitz said. "I'm confident enough in the jurisdiction that we work with here in Broward County that any required staffing needs would be filled by those agencies.

"If you take a situation in any scenario in which you have to dispense medication to the populace, you're looking at 1.8 million people," he said. "That's a bad day. That's a bad couple of days."

PODs were organized in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the largest bio-terror attack in American history. Anthrax-laced letters were discovered in a Boca Raton office building, New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. The case was closed last month after Army scientist Bruce Ivins, a prime suspect, committed suicide.

Val Coz likes the idea of having a center close to her home. She plans to volunteer at a private POD in her Ocean Ridge neighborhood in Palm Beach County.

Like Bob Stevens, who died from inhaling anthrax, Coz and her husband were editors at tabloid publisher American Media Inc.'s building in Boca Raton.

"I realized how complicated it can get during a major health crisis and I thought the idea of a POD was really brilliant," Coz said. "So that if there were a massive health crisis again where people needed to stand in line for medication or information needed to be distributed on a large-scale level it would be far more efficient if we could do it within our own town."

The idea of a private POD is to alleviate pressure on public sites and keep people close to home.

Private PODs were introduced about a year ago.

People can go there for information or medicine from the nation's Strategic National Stockpile of antibiotics, anti-virals or antidotes in the event of emergencies such as a radiological episode, smallpox or avian flu outbreak or anthrax attack.

POD locations are kept secret under the Homeland Security Act. In the event of an emergency, officials will establish public service announcements and hotlines to inform the public where to go.

Copyright 2008 South Florida Sun-Sentinel