Introduction
Communication is one of the key players in the problem-solving techniques in major incidents and crisis. In the case of a crisis such as a disease outbreak, how communication is handled in spreading the information about the diseases to the general public as well as the pertinent medical official is very important in mitigating the aftermath. In this case, SARS was a contagious disease with very little information known (Coombs & Holladay, 2011). The medical officials, as well as the health organisations, were caught unaware with very little information concerning the diseases. As a result very little could be done, regarding communication, to save lives and prevent further spread of the diseases.
The crisis can be defined as a natural crisis given that it occurred as a result of the disturbance in the natural environment. As opposed to other natural crises, the SARS outbreak was an outbreak medical crisis with limited information about prevention and cure of the disease. There were ethical issues involved in this type of crisis given that the medical officials had little information on the severity and the stage of which the disease was contagious. This information was withheld from the public (Liu, Austin & Jin, 2011). Effective communication of this information could have saved massive lives.
In the event of SARS outbreak, it is imperative for the medical response team to have a well laid out communication plans. The agency should have proper communication plans such as connection mobile communications to inform rapidly and update all the necessary parties about the current situation, connection with media houses so as to relay the necessary information to the public, and access to the internet to spread the information through email and social media. While communication with the media is imperative, only relevant and accurate information about the outbreak should be aired so as to avoid speculation and spread of false information. It is imperative to keep the media informed about any developments so as to avoid public panic. CDC can use the social media as a platform for communicating the information pertinent to the outbreak so as to reach a greater number of people given that it spread information almost instantaneously. The use of Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Youtube could be very helpful in spreading relevant information of the diseases so as to make the public ware of the situation and avoid unwarranted panic (Coombs & Holladay, 2011). After the outbreak has passed, the CDC should review their communication strategies in case of a similar situation so as to enhance and address the mistakes, thus mitigate the death toll.
References
Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (Eds.). (2011). The Handbook of crisis communication (Vol.
22). John Wiley & Sons.
Liu, B. F., Austin, L., & Jin, Y. (2011). How publics respond to crisis communication strategies:
The interplay of information form and source.Public Relations Review, 37(4), 345-353.
