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Introduction from Medical Air Solutions Bio-terrorism is a major concern of the Department of Homeland Security. The information on these pages has been gathered from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NIOSH, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID), the Associated Press and other sources. There is no consensus as to what type of biological pathogen may be employed when an aerial attack occurs, but there is a list (below) of possible candidates that are the most likely. There has been discussions on TV and in the printed press about how this type of attack will be dealt with after it occurs. Dealing with the problem assumes that the institutions that are providing help are protected and that the personnel providing care are not themselves infected with whatever pathogen was used. We can assist in protecting individual rooms, or provide an entire building (the EPIC System) to protect against any airborne pathogen including the man-made varieties.
Possible Bioterrorist Airborne Pathogens Characteristics and Symptoms of Some Anti-Human Biological Agents
An act of biological or chemical terrorism might range from dissemination of aerosolized anthrax spores to food product contamination, and predicting when and how such an attack might occur is not possible. However, the possibility of biological or chemical terrorism should not be ignored, especially in light of events during the past 10 years (e.g., the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway and the discovery of military bio-weapons programs in Iraq and the former Soviet Union). Biological agents are odorless, tasteless, and when dispersed in an aerosol cloud, are invisible to the human eye because the particle size of the aerosol is extremely small (1 to 5 microns or smaller). Weight-for-weight, biological weapons are hundreds to thousands of times more potent than the most lethal chemical weapon, meaning that even small amounts (e.g., a few kilograms) could be used with devastating effect, whereas hundreds or thousands of tons of chemical agents could be required for militarily significant operations. Preparing the nation to address this threat is a formidable challenge, but the consequences of being unprepared could be devastating. The public health infrastructure must be prepared to prevent illness and injury that would result from biological and chemical terrorism, especially a covert terrorist attack. As with emerging infectious diseases, early detection and control of biological or chemical attacks depends on a strong and flexible public health system at the local, state, and federal levels. In addition, primary health-care providers throughout the United States must be vigilant because they will probably be the first to observe and report unusual illnesses or injuries. Considerable technical efforts are required to package live
BW agents in a missile warhead and ensure that the agent is dispersed at the
correct height and angle of delivery to create an airborne aerosol.
However despite these technical challenges, recent UN
revelations that Iraq may have retained 16 ballistic missiles armed with BW
warheads in violation of UN Resolutions underlines the serious potential threat
posed by ballistic missiles armed with BW agents.
Congress of the United States Testimony of Donald A. Henderson, MD, MPH (excerpts) The Threat from Biological Weapons Nothing in the realm of natural catastrophes or man-made disasters rivals the complex problems of response that would follow a bioweapons attack against a civilian population. The consequence of such an attack would be an epidemic and, in this country, we have had little experience in coping with epidemics. In fact, no city has had to deal with a truly serious epidemic accompanied by large numbers of cases and deaths since the 1918 influenza epidemic, more than two generations ago. Senators Hart and Rudman, chairs of the United States Commission on National Security in the Twenty-first Century, singled out bioweapons as perhaps the greatest threat that the U.S. might face in the next century. Admiral Stansfield Turner pointed out that, besides nuclear weapons, the only other weapons with the capacity to take the nation past the "point of non-recovery" are the biological ones. The Dark Winter scenario dramatizes the catastrophic potential of smallpox as a weapon. It is, of course, not the only possible organism that might be used. In 1993, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that 100 kilograms of anthrax released upwind of a large American city - the model being Washington, DC - could cause between 130,000 and 3 million deaths, depending on the weather and other variables. This degree of carnage is in the same range as that forecast for a hydrogen bomb. Although there is legitimate concern as well about the possible use of chemical weapons, they are far less effective pound for pound and extremely difficult to deploy over large areas. Ten grams of anthrax can produce as many casualties as a ton of a chemical nerve agent. The insidious manner by which a biological attack would unfold is itself alarming. The fact of an attack using an explosive or chemical weapon would be recognized immediately and resources summoned quickly to deal with the consequences and to begin to remediate the situation. A biological agent would, in all probability, be released clandestinely as an aerosol spray, odorless and invisible, which would drift slowly throughout a building or across a city. Not until days to weeks later would people begin to fall ill; new cases would continue to occur over a period of one to several weeks. Some of those exposed, in all likelihood, would be hundreds of miles away when they develop symptoms -- in other cities, in other countries. Thus, the consequence of the attack would extend well beyond the immediate area of release. The consequences of a biological weapon attack would be an epidemic, most likely following an unannounced attack. In all probability, we would know that something had happened only when people started appearing in the emergency rooms and doctors' offices with strange maladies. Depending on the biological agent and its incubation period, it could be days or weeks after release of the organism before people first became ill. Identification of the cause could be problematical. American physicians today are not trained to diagnose illnesses due to the pathogens thought to be the ones most likely to be used as bioweapons. Few physicians have ever seen cases of anthrax or smallpox or pneumonic plague. It is difficult to imagine how the public might respond in today's world to a fast-moving lethal epidemic. In recent decades, there have been few such epidemics in industrialized cities. One of the more recent occurred in India in 1994. Plague broke out in the diamond-polishing district of Surat. It was reported by the media as a deadly, mysterious fever, possibly plague. Within hours, panic reigned. People began streaming from the city. Many in the medical community were among the first to leave. Eventually half a million fled, leaving the city a ghost town. It is estimated that India lost some two billion dollars in lost trade, embargoes, and production as a consequence of this outbreak. How many actually died of plague is still not clear but the total was not more than 50. Hospitals When Americans are seriously ill, they expect to be cared for in hospitals. If the hospitals became overwhelmed and were paralyzed by chaos, it would have serious implications for public morale and for the potential for containing an epidemic, let alone treating those who were already sick. The likelihood of public anxiety rising to civil disorder would rise substantially. Hospitals are under serious pressure today. Of the 5000 hospitals in the U.S., 30% are losing money; over the last decade, 1000 have closed because of financial reasons. They face a host of regulatory issues including those dealing with health insurance portability, safer needles, medical and medication error reduction, limits on medical device reuse, ergonomic standards for employees, requirements for patient restraints and seclusion, and many more. At the same time, the numbers of the uninsured are increasing and the population is aging and in need of more medical services. The hospitals have struggled to become ever more efficient but, in their quest to eliminate inefficiencies, they have basically wiped out their surge capacity. Even minor increases in patient demand, such as that of the 1999 brief and mild flu season strained most hospitals. This lack of elasticity is also seen in the pharmaceutical field as companies have focused on just-in-time production and delivery. The result is that reserve supplies are few and temporary problems in production are regularly manifested in country-wide spot shortages of such as antibiotics and other critical drugs. There is an increasing shortage of emergency rooms what with the loss of a thousand hospitals in the past decade and a desire on the part of hospitals to close ERs, if possible, because of their drain on resources. The amount of time that Baltimore's hospitals have been on "diversion" of ambulances because of over crowding has doubled every year for the past three years. Ventilators to aid respiration are in short supply. Baltimore, home to two major medical centers and medical schools, could not handle an acute situation that produced as many as 50 casualties requiring ventilators. A handful of highly contagious patients would cause havoc, there being in the Baltimore-Washington area, no more than 100 beds in negative pressure rooms that could handle highly contagious patients. However, the most intractable problem for hospitals is likely to be staffing. As we have been told, only half of all nurses work in hospitals and the average age of a nurse in America is 53. More are now retiring than are being recruited to the field. Hospital administrators report that, even if they had more open beds, they doubt that they would have staff to care for the patients. To see the entire text of this testimony click on the link below... http://www.hopkins-biodefense.org/pages/library/spread.html
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