The next in the series to make you think about things up front. Each of you will answer differently and you will all be right, or maybe wrong. It isn’t a sure thing with definitive Yes/No answers. There are no rights and wrongs only something to consider and plan for.
Your little community doesn’t have a Doctor so over the years since the event you have picked up the baton and managed to perform the role as well as your role of community leader. Using your First Aid experience as a base you have successfully dealt with several minor medical issues. You do have a comprehensive medical toolkit you built up in the hope that if you needed it one day it would be available. One house near you has been turned into a hospital for treating your small community. You have even gone as far as fitting out some houses as a Quarantine Area just in case.
Previously you have also given medical aid to other communities in your area who are also without a Doctor. Basic treatments like cuts, sprains and, in one case, the birth of a child.
A rider has just come from one of these communities looking for medical help. They have a Doctor in their community who has diagnosed Cholera and needs help from other Doctors to handle the numbers that are ill. It seems that everyone, including the Doctor and our rider, has been exposed. He has kept a reasonable distance for safety. He is requesting anyone with medical experience to help as they are desperate.
What will you do now?
It would be easy to get hung up in an ethical model but IMHO this is a medical problem.
Either
A. the remote community needs totally isolating — cholera is a killer and no-one should be allowed out.
Or
B. Your community needs totally isolating —- No-one gets in.
The rider needs to be captured and isolated away from every other member of your community
until the danger phase is past.
However —- if you do decide to send someone to help, Cholera is an easily treatable disease. The prompt administration of oral rehydration salts to replace lost fluids nearly always results in cure. In especially severe cases, intravenous administration of fluids may be required to save the patient’s life.
The following WHO Document for emergency treatment may be helpful..
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0n51ohq3ewQUFhKNW9zQW5YMzA/edit?usp=sharing
I would personally also advise getting some Dukoral Vaccine (Oral Vaccine). It’s fairly inexpensive and only needs renewing every few years. The course of immunisation is two doses for people over six years old and three doses for children 2-6 years old. Each dose is given at least one week apart but no later than six weeks apart. The course of immunisation should be finished at least one week before potentially coming into contact with cholera.
So if you are not already vacciniated then they are going to have to wait one week until your ‘volunteer’ has built up immunity.
Hope this belps
The rider is stopped at a safe distance from the camp, he gives his message from there, he is then sent on his way whilst a decision is made. my initial response is that the medical person is needed in our community, the other community already has a medical person he will just have to do the best he or she can, our community goes into total isolation-nobody in or out- until the medical emergency is over.
I still find it strange how some preppers seem to want to be community leaders or some such important role after shtf.
It’s not just on here I’ve heard it mentioned, many preppers seem to want to have the role of leader after an event.
There seems to be a distinct difference in preppers, I.e. the ones that wanna be and the ones that just wanna be left alone to get on with it.
Site after site bangs on about starting a community up with the sheeple that are left over, telling them what to do and starting over.
They were sheeple before why the hell would that change?
Give them half the chance and the work wouldn’t get done, they’d be off letting somebody else do it.
If sheeple cant be arsed listening to good sense and reason now, theres no way I’d damn well give them ANY of my time after an event apart from to laugh long and hard as I watch them starve.
Seems to be a recurring theme of helping out being good neighbours after an event.
We all know the real brutality of man and woman, just have a read about what the commanche indians did to captives…
The only help I’d give to anybody who comes across my camp is a 12 gauge slug.
Theres no them going away tel;ling everybody what i’ve got or not got, you cant afford ANY sentiment towards strangers after an event.
Look at people now, they’d screw you over for a packet of fags and a pat on the back from the dole office.
Take a real long hard look at them now and just imagine what they’d be like after.
I couldn’t agree more Prepper1, I don’t intend to be IN a community situation if I can help it, I still feel FOR ME that lone wolf is the way to go, I just answered the question as if I was in a community, it is NOT my intention to be in one. maybe I shouldn’t have answered the question but its just a Scenario at the end of the day isn’t it?
Indeed it is and most definitely not a go at you my friend.
It was just an observation on how many of the prep sites/preppers seem to want the whole community thing.
To much trouble, to much effort keeping them under control and making them do the work if you ask me…
agreed. I’ve had “the man” telling me what to do my whole life. After SHTF I don’t want to be working for someone else’s benefit. Had enough of that.
that’s the point Jimmy, there will be a lot of that post SHTF, can you imagine trying to organise people who don’t want to be told what to do-even if their lives depended on it??
@bp’s first answer is an answer and it certainly fulfills the medical model.
@prepper1 and @bp’s second post are simply the usual anti-community rants and neither answer
the questions posed in the OP.
You don’t have to want to be the leader in order to believe that some form of
communal action is necessary and vital. The question is what do we do
in order to achieve a viable post TU community in the face of disease.
a viable community will only be so if it is made up of preppers and off gridders, fill it full of sheeple and you will end up with endless committees and more chiefs than Indians.
I also DO NOT believe categorically that a “community is necessary and vital”- why? because some one says it is so? our ancestors moved around in family groups-they didn’t trust outsiders and nor do I! at least with a family group you know who to trust(or not), strangers are treated with distrust and rightly so.
RS – thanks for the info. Sound!
Lets go back to the original question and try not to go off at a tangent.
Cholera is basically caused by bad hygiene and spread by the same.
Cholera is not likely to be transmitted directly from one person to another; therefore, casual contact with an infected person is not a risk for becoming ill.
It would, even so, be prudent to put quarantine into practice and to wear protective clothing when approaching a person.
It should also be stressed that strict hygiene should be practised.
Therefore one should seriously consider lending a hand to the other community.You never know when you may be grateful of their help.
If you lived in a community where this happened then you have a chance of survival.
On your own you may not even have the strength to treat yourself.
In the scenario, I am not a doctor, but I am helping out as a doctor, I have no ethical responsibility to go out and help another community.
…. but I am medically trained, therefor I know how to deal with the problem,…
If I were to go to the other community to help, and end up a casualty myself, I do a dis service to my own community.
Therefore I would not go,….. but I would give full instructions and medical supplies to anyone who wanted to go and help,
If no-one wanted to and help, it might be one idea to bring the doctor and some others from the other community into one of our isolation houses, so that they could be treated, if we could get the doctor cured and fit he could go back and sort his own community out, he could look after his own people who are sick without any more risk to those who are not yet sick, and no risk to us.
Clearly our own isolation houses are in such a position as to hold no risk to our own community,… the situation on the ground would decide what action we would take
Does anyone think this might be helpful?
http://www.cdc.gov/haiticholera/pdf/chw_trainingmaterialsforcholera.pdf
I personally would be majorly pissed of that the rider had found me at all , i know i’ll need help but i don’t envisage having a colony about me , more friends and family and not to many of them.
If i were the only member of my community with enough medical knowledge to protect the others around me i would not go and risk the spread of an outbreak either to myself or others in my community upon my return. However, I would take time to communicate with the traveler (all the while making sure i was properly protected) and discuss the conditions of his hometown. From this we could perhaps determine the main cause of the outbreak. It may simply be down to a case of poor hygiene which could be caused either by negligence or simple ignorance of proper practice. I would gather as much information as i could and supply the traveler with a plan to help his community. Most likely including the checking of nearby water supplies and the sanitation of both facilities and instruments used in the process of treating not only those affected but all others in their community.
(This would also include a plan for my own town checking water supplies etc as we do not want the same thing happening to us and it is possible.)
If it were at all possible i would send medical supplies providing we had enough ourselves or perhaps even offer some up in trade for the things our community desperately needed but could not lay our hands on.
It would not be morally right in my opinion to simply forget about another communities problems especially if some simple advice could perhaps aid others in fear of (worst case scenario) death.
So in this case i have managed not only to protect my community from the outbreak i can also sleep with a clear conscience knowing i have at least tried my best to help – situation permitting.
note: sterilization is quite easily achieved if you have the proper knowledge something as simple as boiled salt water (saline) will work. also protective clothing can be easily fashioned from various things if the right materials are not available. perhaps this community just need a nudge in the right direction?
Personally I would want to help out another community because you never know what you may need in the future. But! My first thought is they have a doctor who can treat their people so advise to him and their community leader through the rider would be my first point of call. Clean up and make sure hygiene is at the top of your list and drum it into people possibly punishing people if their hygiene is just not good enough. This should help with keeping certain things at a better distance and outbreaks not being quite so bad. Secondly at the sane time as my first idea would be supplies to them, to me it is obvious they are desperate so small supplies that i can afford to release (which may even be nothing but may only be a bottle of water) possibly i can afford to release a few medical supplies but always keeping in mind an outbreak in my community would still need to be dealt with. My last point of action and one i would only take if my community would be under threat if i didnt would be to leave them and help this would take me as a leader away leaving a void and possible attack could mean my community not being there on my return, it could be the community asking that is trapping us to get more than we are willing to release.
I have answered the question taking into account the criteria but i am hoping that i will not end up in a community larger than my family and close friends if shtf. My family first yours second is a phrase i use in my daily life now and will be the top of my list if shtf. If i can afford to help you out i will but i may need what i have at a later date so no my family comrs first.
I hope this makes someone think about the good community spirit that this country needs but seems to be losing rapidly (my opinion you may think differently) but also makes people think about helping a stranger. They could be genuine and in need but they could also have an ambush set around the corner