Medical Management of Biological Agent Casualties

The threat of use of biological warfare agents is no longer confined to the battlefield. Due to recent events involving biological as well as chemical agents, civilian communities far removed from centers of armed conflict have come to realize they, too, are vulnerable. The ability to save lives in the event of a biological agent release turns on provision of immediate and correct medical care in the field and hospital. Being able to ensure availability of life-saving care depends on reaching both military and civilian medical personnel with information on biological warfare agents and on keeping their skills and knowledge current. This important educational effort is also a daunting and potentially expensive task in view of the numbers and geographic despersion of persons to be trained. The United States Department of Defense has addressed and overcome these challenges by electing to use computer technology to make cost-effective biological warfare agent training conveniently available worldwide to all who require it.

The unique interactive, multi-media instructional program, Medical Management of Biological Agent Casualties, is the product of a partnership that blends the expertise of two federal agencies. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a part of the U.S. Army Medical Command, is responsible for educating military health care providers on current medical defense against biological agents. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is developing the program at USAMRIID's request, has extensive experience in developing dual-use (military/civilian) educational programs based on military doctrine for dealing with chemical warfare agents, and counts as one of its primary constituencies the civilian emergency response community.

The program presents medical treatment protocols for immediate care of both military and civilian casualties, as well as information on agent detection and containment, decontamination, and self-protection strategies (i.e., use of vaccines and personal protective equipment). This Internet-compatible, CD-ROM-delivered training, available in early 1998, provides:

• multiple job-specific, instructional tracks...for medical professionals, field/hospital medical support personnel, and non-medical personnel...applicable for military audiences as well as for civilian counterparts and interested lay persons,
  
• physiology of and signs and symptoms of exposure to those 12 bacteria, viruses and biological toxins posing the greatest threat to military personnel,
  
• self-tests for evaluating mastery of key learning objectives,
  
• dramatized scenarios offering opportunities for practicing differential diagnoses of patients,
  
• extensive library of reference materials, and
  
• hyperlinks to World Wide Web sites containing relevant biological information.