Bioterrorism: new challenges for the healthcare systems worldwide

"Bioterrorism is a tangible and very dangerous threat worldwide. Intensive efforts should be made to prevent or foil it and to create a suitable medical response should prevention fail", Dr. Meir Oren (Haifa/Israel) emphasizes.

The principal challenges for the healthcare system are:

- To setup a body to direct the handling of such an incident at the national level and to interface with all the government authorities.
- To put into operation a smoothly running and efficient system.
- To prepare the public healthcare system appropriately and professionally on the national level and to efficiently conduct numerous epidemiologic investigations within a relatively short space of time.
- To prepare the primary healthcare system properly to cope with cases of exceptional morbidity due to uncommon generators.
- To prepare the hospital system to cope with all eventualities.
- To ensure that the infrastructure of the national laboratory system achieves the required level of preparedness, and to improve the diagnostic capabilities of the national laboratories within the public health system.
- To establish a structured system to train personnel; to handle, store, and accumulate information; to devise exercises; and to control, drill, and test all units of the healthcare system and its interfaces.
- To install e reliable, well-designed information system that will serve the professional teams and also act as a source of up-to-date information and advice for the public.