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Bioterrorism - RCJ
Here's the nightmare: Terrorists contaminate a shopping
mall in Denver, Colo., with the plague. Soon, emergency
rooms and clinics begin seeing patients with flu like
symptoms. By the time doctors diagnose plague, coughing
patients are spreading this lethal bacteria though out the
state and into the surrounding area.
Fortunately, this was just a test run called TOPOFF 2000
organized last year by the Federal Emergency Management
Association (FEMA). Its main purpose was to assess the
nation’s ability to manage a disaster involving weapons of
mass destruction. Doctors, hospitals and U.S. health care
organizations such as The Red Cross used this fictitious
scenario to test how they would control disease if there
were ever a bioterrorist attack.
What did we learn from this trial run?
Former District 9 (Denver) FEMA director, Rick Weiland
(now a consultant in Sioux Falls and this columnist brother)
felt that last year’s terrorism exercise helped the federal,
state and local governments prepare for a terrorist attack.
“We learned that only through preparedness can we truly
minimize the destructiveness of those who intend to harm
us”, Weiland says. He believes that stopping terrorism
needs to be our first priority but getting prepared and
staying prepared will require our undivided attention. “We
all have some responsibility in this new war on terrorism,”
he said.
This was a 3.5 million dollar exercise that exposed
vulnerabilities within the US medical care system and other
public health agencies.
In the case of a chemical attack, our
first responders will be police, firefighters, and
paramedics. First responders to a biological incident would
be our emergency room physicians and nurses, primary care
physicians, infectious disease specialist, hospitals and
clinics as well as laboratory experts and pharmacist.
Up until now, there has been very
little involvement in any of these groups in planning a
response. How well we respond to a threat or attack will
depend on how well prepared we are on those front lines.
In lieu of the recent anthrax terrorist
attacks in Washington D.C., Gov. Bill Janklow has developed
a bioterrorism task force to enhance our medical- and
public- health response teams. In order to deal with the
consequences of a possible bioterrorist attack, our first
responders will need to be trained to recognize disease
early and to report potential outbreaks. Laboratory
directors will have to be responsible for lab diagnosis, and
state and local health officials will require special
training in early detection, surveillance and management of
an epidemic should such a terrorist attack arise.
From the FEMA scenario, officials also
learned there was a lack of essential vaccines and effective
drugs to treat any possible biological outbreak. As a
result, antibiotics and vaccines now are available through
the Center for Disease Control, and most hospitals and
pharmacies can treat the potential infectious agents. The
challenge, however, is to ensure that there are enough of
these drugs to treat everyone exposed.
The government is currently expanding
its ability to provide vaccinations, medical care, and
disease control on a massive scale. Weiland believes that
we must be willing to maintain stockpiles of these drugs and
vaccinations in order to administer to the general public in
the event of a bioterrorist attack.
“In order to counter bioterrorism, we
must also develop the technology to rapidly diagnose and
identify the biological agent so we can administer effective
treatment,” Weiland said.
The rapid diagnoses and early treatment
is the best form of counter terrorism. America essentially
has a missile-defense system that is very effective ---in
the form of antibiotics and vaccinations --- but only if
administered early. We therefore must develop the
technology to rapidly diagnose the agent involved in an
attack in order to treat early.
Weiland believes this improved testing,
coupled with the development of newer and better
vaccinations, will serve the dual purpose of protecting the
general public health as well as defending against
biological weapons.
Content
of articles can only be used with writer attribution to Dr.
Kevin Weiland.
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