{"id":61798,"date":"2011-03-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-pharmacy-professor-who-saw-it-all-after-katrina-rita-acutely-aware-of-public-health-issues-in-japan\/"},"modified":"2011-03-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T00:00:00","slug":"uri-pharmacy-professor-who-saw-it-all-after-katrina-rita-acutely-aware-of-public-health-issues-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2011\/03\/uri-pharmacy-professor-who-saw-it-all-after-katrina-rita-acutely-aware-of-public-health-issues-in-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 Pharmacy professor who saw it all after Katrina, Rita acutely aware of public health issues in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 16, 2011 \u2013 As an emergency medical responder, Jeffrey Bratberg knows too well the horror and suffering that follow disasters like Hurricane Katrina and floods.<\/p>\n


\nBut the clinical associate professor of pharmacy at the 溏心vlog免费B站, said he is finding it difficult to find the words to describe the devastation in Japan following last week\u2019s earthquake and tsunami.<\/p>\n


\nBratberg and fellow Associate Pharmacy Professor Brett Feret will answer questions about the public health challenges in Japan as part of a live student- run webcast, Thursday, March 17 at 5 p.m. Click on the 溏心vlog免费B站 Live link<\/a> to watch the show and participate<\/b>.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThere is total infrastructure devastation,\u201d said Bratberg, an expert in responding to bioterrorism, pandemics and natural disasters and who serves on the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance Team, which completed two tours of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cLike Katrina and New Orleans, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have overwhelmed the ability to respond,\u201d said Bratberg, who was shocked by bodies floating on the floodwaters of New Orleans and a pervasive, armed military presence in 2005.<\/p>\n


\nAddressing water-borne diseases, Bratberg said there is a low likelihood of what was seen after the earthquake in Haiti. \u201cHowever, the drastic and severely compromised sewage and water infrastructure, combined with shortages of fuel to boil water, may lead to diarrhea (but no cholera cases like in Haiti) and other water-borne infections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n


\nBratberg said the evacuations should help reduce risk to radiation exposure as long as the winds blow the cloud to the Pacific, which he said does not pose a risk to the United States.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI am happy to see that the Japanese Defense Force has been testing and distributing potassium iodide, which protects against thyroid cancer and other thyroid disorders caused by breathing air or eating food or drink contaminated with radioactivity,\u201d Bratberg said. <\/p>\n


\nHe said people in Japan are remarkably resilient and well prepared for disasters and that they probably felt as though they could deal with the earth opening up and the resulting destruction.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t know how they deal with whole communities being swept away,\u201d Bratberg said.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cEven in my role as a disaster medical professional and even considering the level of disaster preparedness in Japan, I can\u2019t even fathom dealing acutely and chronically with this disaster,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cPeople can\u2019t find places to sleep, they are trying to find food, all while trying to find lost relatives,\u201d the pharmacy professor said. \u201cImagine one of the most industrialized cities in the world shutting down for three hours daily because of a lack of power.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nJapan, like the United States and other industrialized countries have well trained disaster teams, but \u201cnobody can prepare them for the mental toll that is occurring in Japan right now. This is beyond anyone\u2019s imagination. When you have immense structural damage, and no fuel to clear it out, no electricity and it\u2019s cold and snowing, what do you do and what do you tell people?<\/p>\n


\n\u201cOfficials are telling people to stay in their homes to reduce exposure to radiation from the failed nuclear power plants, but where do you go if your house is gone because of the tsunami?\u201d <\/p>\n


\nIn disasters such as Japan is experiencing, counselors, psychiatrists, and medications are resources often underused and are also in short supply.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 16, 2011 \u2013 As an emergency medical responder, Jeffrey Bratberg knows too well the horror and suffering that follow disasters like Hurricane Katrina and floods. But the clinical associate professor of pharmacy at the 溏心vlog免费B站, said he is finding it difficult to find the words to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}