Preparing for Terrorism Tools for Evaluating the Metropolitan Medical Response System Program (2002) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 17-30
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From page 17... ...
(The expenses incurred in responding to the results of the airliner hijackings on September 11, 2001, and to the effects of the mailing of the anthrax spore-laden letters that followed will undoubtedly add substantially to those totals when a full accounting is available.) Among these federal efforts to combat terrorism with WMD is the Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS)
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From page 18... ...
; other agents such as chlorine and ammonia are widely used by industry. These agents are often classified by the site or nature of their effects in humans, such as nerve agents, blister agents, choking agents, vomiting agents, incapacitants, and tear agents; and many of these agents are not well known by civilian hazardous materials technicians and other emergency responders, medical personnel, or law enforcement officials.
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From page 19... ...
Biological Agents Biological agents with adverse effects on human health include viruses, bacteria, fungi, and toxins. Specific toxins are included here rather than under chemical agents only because they are chemicals produced by a living entity (ricin from castor beans, saxitoxin from certain shellfish, and botulinum toxin from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, for example)
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~ treatment FIGURE 1-1 Flow chart of probable actions in a chemical or overt biological agent incident. EMS, emergency medical services; decon, decontamination.
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From page 21... ...
Radiological Agents The term "radiological weapon," in distinction to the term "nuclear weapon," refers to a weapon that would disseminate radioactive materials by means other than an uncontrolled fission chain reaction. The socalled dirty bomb, which consists of radioactive material wrapped around conventional explosives, is the best-known example.
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From page 22... ...
Exposure to excessive amounts of ionizing radiation does not make one radioactive; but in the short run it can produce skin reddening and loss of hair, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, sterility, tissue fibrosis, organ atrophy, bone marrow failure, and death. None of these effects are instantaneous, so radiological terrorism would present some of the same challenges for clinical diagnosis and law enforcement that covert bioterrorism would.
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From page 23... ...
The first of its kind in the civilian environment, the MMST was designed to provide initial, on-site emergency health, medical, and mental health services after a terrorist incident involving CBR materials. The team's mission includes CBR agent detection and identification, patient decontamination, triage and medical treatment, emergency transportation of patients to local hospitals, coordination of movement of patients to more distant hospitals via the National Disaster Medical System, and planning for the disposition of nonsurvivors.
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From page 24... ...
response agencies; and to provide assistance to major cities in establishing "medical strike teams" (emphasis added)
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From page 25... ...
teams; and their plans, training, and equipment centered around dealing with chemical agents. Some of the other early MMRS program cities changed the MMST concept by integrating strike team capabilities into existing fire department, emergency medical
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From page 26... ...
OEP soon amended the initial contracts to focus more attention on coping with a covert release of a biological agent and changed the name of the program to the Metropolitan Medical Response System. The new name emphasizes that the program is intended to enhance the capabilities of existing systems that involve not just hazmat personnel, law enforcement personnel, emergency medical services personnel, public hospitals, and the American Red Cross but also public health agencies and laboratories, private hospitals, clinics, independent physicians, and other private-sector organizations.
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From page 27... ...
In Phase II, the committee shall use the performance measures developed from Phase I to recommend and then develop appropriate evaluation methods, tools, and processes to assess the MMRS development process. When developing these methods, tools, and processes the committee should, at a minimum, address the following: 27
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From page 28... ...
In Phase II, the committee used the preparedness indicators established in Phase I to develop usable evaluation methods, tools, and processes for assessing both program management by OEP and the capabilities of the local communities necessary for effective response to CBR terrorism. Those methods, tools, and processes are the subject of this second and final report.
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From page 29... ...
As additional sources of information, the sponsor's project officers shared file copies of completed plans from six MMRS program cities and offered committee members contacts and resources in the OEP offices that had relevant data. The committee members themselves contributed both personal contacts and specific information from their own files and experience.
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From page 30... ...
Finally, Chapter 9 presents a brief summary and the committee's overall conclusions and recommendations for improving the MMRS program. Appendixes provide brief biographies of the committee and staff, descriptions of federal teams available to respond to the scene of terrorism involving a CBR agent, a list of MMRS program cities, the checklist with which OEP evaluates MMRS contract compliance, a collection of nearly 500 preparedness indicators potentially applicable to the MMRS program that was the product of phase I of this IOM project, and fictional biological, chemical, and radiological scenarios with discussion questions.
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