|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Defense Scholars Impugn U.S. Biological-Attack Readiness; Rural Hospitals Called “Weakest Link” By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Rural hospitals constitute a serious gap in U.S. defenses against a biological attack, according to a report released today by the National Defense University. The strain of new terrorism worries in public health is especially hard on the approximately 2,000 rural hospitals around the United States, which tend to be less well-equipped and more generally vulnerable than their suburban and urban counterparts, indicates Hometown Hospitals: The Weakest Link?, written by public-health expert Elin Gursky. “We have vulnerable hospitals generally, and particularly, our older rural hospitals have in some ways greater vulnerability … and far less capacity than we might imagine,” Gursky said today in an interview. The report is one of three that the university released today which raise doubts about U.S. preparedness for a biological attack. In Looking for Trouble: A Policy-Maker’s Guide to Biosensing, researchers led by Robert Armstrong of the university’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy recommend shifting resources in the $60 million federal Biowatch program away from sensing devices and toward health monitoring of public servants such as police and firefighters. In Who You Gonna Call? Responding to a Medical Emergency with the Strategic National Stockpile, the center’s Stephen Prior explores deficiencies in the U.S. vaccine stockpile program. Gursky, formerly a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s now-defunct Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, wrote the rural-hospital report after traveling the country to speak with hospital staff, police, firefighters and elected officials. Country hospitals, she said today on the sidelines of a biological security conference organized by Student Pugwash U.S.A., need more guidance about how to prepare for major outbreaks occurring naturally or resulting from malicious acts. Many of the hospitals, Gursky said, are “wide open” ― unlike suburban and urban hospitals with limited points of entry and tight security ― and lack the emergency-room triage operations that are common in newer facilities. Compounding the problem, nurses and doctors at the rural hospitals often fail to take proper precautions, Gursky said. “When Uncle Joe walks in, you’re not going to put gloves on,” she said, describing the prevailing culture at many of the hospitals. In the report, Gursky provides case studies of rural hospitals around the country. She writes that many are “relatively old and structurally porous, incapable of containing or preventing the aerosolized spread of an infectious disease”; have just enough equipment and staff and no surge capacity; and use unreliable communications systems. Rural hospitals, Gursky writes, will need help in case of an attack, but no adequate support system now exists to provide that aid. “A catastrophic event or an act of bioterrorism,” she writes, “will require that rural hospitals receive outside assistance to sustain ongoing operations, intervene upon the potentially unremitting flow of medical emergencies and contain the epidemic sequelae of a deliberately deployed pathogen. However, coordinated and reliable systems of hospital support still evade current response paradigms, attributable in large part to the stovepiped streams of money and nonintegrated planning efforts prevalent across the spectrum of civilian and noncivilian sectors that have identified terrorism-response roles and responsibilities.” Rural hospitals are important to overall U.S. defenses, Gursky said, because terrorists might see the facilities as easy targets and because many escape plans call for city-dwellers and suburbanites to take refuge in the country. The symbolic effect of a terrorist strike in a rural region is also not to be underestimated, she said. “The panic and the fear are going to be in the heartland of America,” Gursky said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
