Region 21 Public Health Emergency Preparedness

Region 21 comprises the towns of Branford, East Haven, Guilford, Madison and North Branford, and is served by the East Shore Health Department District, the Guilford Health Department and the Madison Health Department.

Mass Medication Dispensing Plan Outline (Point of Dispensing (POD))

The Mass Medication Dispensing Plan Outline is a plan to quickly dispense medication from the Strategic National Stockpile to residents of Region 21 in response to a large-scale public health emergency.

General Information

In preparation for a potential large-scale public health emergency the Federal Government has stockpiled certain medicines for rapid distribution throughout the country. This plan is limited to the relatively basic task of dispensing medication in pill form such as antibiotics. In time the program may expand to anti-viral or other take home medicines. Large scale immunizations for outbreaks such as Smallpox or Pandemic Flu will require separate, more complex clinic plans and information about them will be added to this website as they are developed.

This plan assumes the Governor, in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will declare a medical emergency which will trigger release of the stored medications for distribution. Once this happens, Region 21 will operate two distribution clinics, one in Branford serving East Haven and Branford and the other in Madison serving Guilford, Madison and North Branford. We expect we will be able to dispense medication to the majority of the population within 48 hours (two 16-hour days) of the initiation of the clinic, but this will depend on the cooperation of the public and a large number of volunteers.