Here are the supplies you should stockpile
Antibiotics are difficult to stockpile for a potential terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction, says Christopher Richards, MD, chairman of the disaster committee and an attending physician at the department of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
"Doxycycline is likely the best choice to stockpile, but the costs are prohibitive as they have a defined shelf life," Richards says. "You would need to store much more than the average hospital uses during the shelf life of doxycycline."
Nerve agents are commonly used by terrorists because they are so deadly, says Robert Suter, DO, MHA, FACEP, regional medical director for the North Texas region at Questcare Emergency Services in Plano. "Even though they are hard to make, a relatively small amount can kill a large number of people," he says.
Atropine is the antidote for nerve agents and is a common drug in every ED crash cart, notes Suter. "But the problem is, the usual maximum dose for a patient for cardiac reasons is 2 to 3 mg. But a nerve agent casualty could easily use 20 or 30 mg of atropine. So essentially, just a couple patients could wipe out the entire hospital’s stock of atropine in an hour or two."
Consider stockpiling atropine, Suter recommends. By doing that, "if you have a major incident, you can access it." Also stockpile bleach, he suggests. "To some extent, you can decontaminate everything with good planning and lots of water. But ideally, you would utilize bleach to decontaminate the deadliest chemicals. So consider stockpiling 55-gallon drums of bleach someplace where they could be quickly accessed and brought to a decontamination station at the hospital."
Ciprofloxin is an antidote to many biological warfare agents, but there may not be enough to go around in your city, says Suter. "EDs should be aware of how to access these drugs," he explains. "When those sorts of resource issues come up, you need to know when to trigger a call to the National Disaster Medical System."
The National Disaster Medical System in Balti more, MD, is an organization that pools resources in communities nationwide committed to supporting each other in case of disaster.
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