August 15, 2007
Chevak’s Tribal Council and Community Health Aides, along with YKHC’s Immunization Program and others helped organize the mass dispensing exercise in Chevak.
Chevak immunizes 100 at Mass Dispensing Exercise
The community of Chevak stepped up to the challenge and organized their first Mass Dispensing Exercise on July 9, immunizing their youngest population against chicken pox.
This was one of the largest dispensing exercises of a single immunization that has been done in the Delta. In just over four hours, with very little preparation, Chevak dispensed nearly 100 doses of Varicella alone,” said Robert Filipczak, Immunization Coordinator for YKHC.
Leo Moses Jr., Tribal Council member for Chevak, attended YKHC’s Tribal Gathering event in April, initiating contact between the council and Public Health Nursing who shared information on Mass Dispensing Exercises.
“The Tribal Council, City of Chevak, our Community Health Aides, and our entire community were all involved. It was our whole village coming together to put it on,” said Richard Slats, Administrator for Chevak Tribal Council.
“It lowered our list for those who needed immunizations,” said Charlotte Nayagak, who assisted Health Aides during the exercise. “It was a very successful event for our village.”
YKHC and Public Health Nursing, along with other organizations in the Bethel community, sit together on the YK Immunization Coalition and work with Tribal Councils to organize these events.
“We understand that by doing the job separately, we can only do so much, but by blending our knowledge and our abilities, we can get so much more accomplished.” Filipczak said.
The event was held at the Chevak community hall where clinic staff dispensed the Varicella vaccine, a vaccine that rarely makes it out to the villages. When removed from the storage refrigerator, the vaccine must be administered within 72 hours or it is no longer effective.
“We used the Varicella vaccine because it tends to not get out to the villages as often as we would like. It’s difficult to dispense in a timely manner and the best way to give it is in a mass-dispensing scenario,” said Filipczak. “If Chevak needed to dispense, we could fly in and deliver the immunizations, and they would be able to do it themselves,” said Tim Struna, Nurse Manager at the Public Health Center in Bethel.
The Chevak community has increased its level of emergency preparedness and is planning for another event to administer Influenza this fall.