Doctors and health officials from Kirklees and Calderdale are set to take part in an ebola crisis exercise.
But they have reassured members of the public that the risk of the deadly virus affecting the Huddersfield region is “extremely low”.
Public Health England has organised a Yorkshire event next Tuesday to test hospitals’ and councils’ readiness should ebola be found in a patient.
Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust has confirmed it is sending its top infection specialist, consultant Gavin Boyd, to the half-day exercise.
Kirklees Council public health department will also attend the briefing at a secret location somewhere in Yorkshire.
A scenario to test Kirklees’ systems response to an incident is also planned in November.
Health officials are now moving to set up a core command and control structure should a case an outbreak of ebola be found in the region.
Dr Judith Hooper, Kirklees Director for Public Health, said ebola posed an extremely low risk in Kirklees.
Speaking at the council’s Health and Wellbeing Board meeting on Thursday, she said: “The UK remains a low risk and therefore Kirklees remains an even lower risk, especially given there is not a huge influx of people from Africa.
“We had a meeting earlier his week and I am assured that all agencies, the NHS and the council, are prepared should a suspected case of ebola be detected.
“One of the first things that will go wrong will be communication. We’ve been working with Public Health England and the council so that if an ambulance draws up outside a door and out jump men in suits it will break on Twitter – we do have a plan to manage it.”
Public Health England is also a hosting a Yorkshire-wide seminar on November 13 to inform authorities how to prepare for ebola, what the implications are on the region’s ambulance fleet and to clarify the role of specialist infection centre at Sheffield Teaching Hospital, thought to be the hospital designated for use should a pandemic hit the north.
A spokesperson for NHS England in West Yorkshire said: “NHS organisations with other multi-agency partners across Yorkshire are conducting an exercise to test the plans for identifying and treating patients who might be suspected of having ebola.
“Exercises are a normal part of testing our arrangements for a whole range of situations and this exercise will be based on scenarios developed nationally by Public Health England.
“Whilst plans for responding to a case of Viral Haemorrhagic Fever, including ebola, are not new, this will be an opportunity to ensure all our plans are joined up and reflect the newer guidance which has been released in recent weeks in response to the ongoing outbreak in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.”
The Examiner has recently reported Huddersfield-born Dr Geraldine O’Hara has travelled to Africa to tackle the outbreak which has claimed thousands of lives.
Dr O’Hara, 36, a specialist in infectious diseases, is working for Medicine Sans Frontieres in Sierra Leone.
