The Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit (NEPMU) 2 hosted a Tropical Medicine Course conducted by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research March 3-5.

The three-day mobile course was designed to improve medical providers' ability to identify, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases of significance to deploying and re-deploying U.S. service members and those of U.S. national strategic interest.

"The Tropical Medicine course put on by WRAIR is a class act. It met an important need for knowledge of infectious diseases faced by operational forces deploying to many parts of the world," said Capt. Christopher Clagett, NEPMU2 preventive medicine officer.

The course provides an overview of tropical medicine for medical personnel through lecture and laboratory identification. Discussion topics included disease prevention, diagnosis and control with the ultimate of goal of improved patient treatment. And for local area commands that may not have been able to attend the five-day course in Washington D.C., hosting similar training at NEPMU-2 was both cost-effective and convenient.

"This kind of knowledge is essential for two reasons. First, given that we lack the logistics capacity to take sufficient medications to treat large numbers of cases of disease, we must use knowledge of disease ecology to prevent cases among our personnel," said Clagett. "Second, these are diseases that do not commonly occur in the United States, so U.S. medical training often lacks any substantial content in them. Because of that lack, U.S. providers are often handicapped in both the recognition and clinical management of conditions that are at least mission-limiting when they are not fatal."

According to Hospital Corpsman 1st Class (FMF/SW) Michael Bigelow, NEPMU-2 preventive medicine technician, a basic knowledge of prevention and identification of infectious diseases is one of the many topics that a preventive medicine technician (PMT) should have, especially when deploying to parts of the world where these diseases are common.

"The course was not only a very thorough refresher, but I also learned many things that I did not previously know," said Bigelow. "The instructors were all subject matter experts in their respective fields, so they were very knowledgeable and were willing and able to answer any questions that were asked. I greatly enjoyed the course, and although I hope that nobody that I deploy with is exposed to one of the many diseases that were taught, I feel much better prepared if it happens."

For more information on NEPMU-2 visit: http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nepmu2/Pages/default.aspx

For more news from Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, visit www.navy.mil/.