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As ongoing collaborators with NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), CUNY SPH and the NYC Preparedness & Recovery Institute (PRI) enthusiastically promote the health network’s newly-launched tool to help clinicians, public health officials, and emergency management professionals visualize global outbreak activity and respond to special pathogen threats.
The Special Pathogens Biopreparedness Map is an interactive, open-source tool that provides near real-time information to the public health care system’s frontline teams to quickly connect patients’ travel histories with current outbreak activity and take the appropriate steps to stop disease transmission.
Special pathogens pose a serious risk to healthcare personnel and demand clear hospital protocols to ensure early recognition and isolation of infected patients, along with enhanced infection control practices during evaluation and care. The webpage accompanying the map provides clinician fact sheets that explain how to identify, isolate, and alert appropriate teams, with guidance on epidemiologic risk factors, infection control strategies, and links to local health department contacts. The map tracks current special pathogens and emerging threats, including Ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), H5N1 (bird flu), and Nipah. Multiple trusted data sources supply timely information on disease transmission, and the map will be updated regularly as new cases are detected and outbreak classifications change.
“Preparedness depends on shared, timely, and usable information,” PRI Co-Leads Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr and CUNY SPH Dean Ayman El-Mohandes said in a press release. “We are eager to support NYC Health + Hospitals in advancing open tools that help keep New Yorkers safe.”
