News

Public Health: Maintaining a healthy force

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Joshua J. Garcia
  • 380th Air Expeditionary Wing
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  Communicable diseases have the ability to spread throughout an area rapidly. Some spread in days, others in seconds. It is the 380th Expeditionary Medical Group Public Health office's job to prevent the spread of disease. The staff of two performs food and public sanitation inspections on 20 facilities, to keep the spread of disease to a minimum.

"We prevent diseases," said U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Nathan Hanzy, 380th EMDG NCO in charge of preventive medicine. "We do monthly food and facility inspections to include the gym, lodging, dining facilities and even ensuring the local restaurants on base get their food from approved food sources."

A facilities inspection schedule is dictated by frequency of use. High-traffic facilities could have bi-weekly inspections, while low-traffic facilities could be inspected quarterly.

"Take the gym for instance," said Hanzy. "We inspect those guys twice a month, and after each inspection the facility is rated from Marginal to Excellent."

Hanzy also ensures the base dining facilities are kept up to Food and Drug Administration standards. Hanzy said they are able to do on the spot corrections with small items at the dining facilities but a big issue could cause the facility to close down until it is fixed.

The input public health provides doesn't always close down facilities; they have the ability to bring positive change to a situation. After performing an inspection on several latrines on the installation, public health deemed the restroom facilities unsatisfactory for use, shortly after the latrines were replaced with new ones.

"The toilets didn't work, and water didn't work," said Hanzy. "We did an inspection and brought it to commanders, afterwards new latrines were brought in. It was all done within a month."

Public health briefs all incoming personnel as well as forward deploying personnel about disease threats that may be in the area. Hanzy said they watch disease trends within the local region and then inform base personnel about these trends and how to prevent contracting them.

Working primarily with the force support squadron and the civil engineer squadron the public health staff ensures services facilities are up to standard. Additionally, they work with the entomology shop to avoid any possible communicable diseases from the native animals.

"We work big time with entomology as far as anything from mice, insects, and any animal running loose, we have our part in that," said Hanzy. "If there's an infestation of mosquitoes, we will find the water source and then work with civil engineering; they put pellets in the water to kill off the larva."

With the ability for communicable disease to spread great distances over a short amount of time, it is fitting that public health should have a vast reach to prevent the spread of disease.

"We joke about this all the time, but we have our hands in everything that goes on around the base," said Hanzy. "We might not always be the shop making the changes, but our recommendations to agencies make the changes happen, we are the spear head."

According to Hanzy, staying current with immunizations, washing your hands and changing linens frequently are some of the most important infection control measures we can individually implement here.