CBRN Defence in the Hospital Environment

Overview:

Following a terrorist CBRNE attack in urban/megapolis environment approximately 20% of those involved will remain in place (dead, severely wounded/contaminated) while 80% will flee to all possible directions seeking for medical advice. In addition, the ratio between contaminated vs. worried well is 1:5 and this will overwhelm hospitals in a very short time leading to collapse. Based on Tokyo sarin experience, all hospital and clinics in a big city will accept contaminated casualties. Therefore, all of them need to be adequately prepared to deal with CBRNE casualties.

It is generally believed that there is a gap in preparedness between the ambulance service and the hospitals’ emergency services in London and other major Olympic Cities. Specialized questions on hospital CBRNE defense will be set and authorities involved will be asked to address them. The main goal of this masterclass is to identify gaps in preparedness and assist hospital to correct them the best way they can. An anthropocentric approach in planning will be proposed and the experience from previous Olympic Games (2004) will be shared with the participants. Certain proposals for now and the near future will be analyzed and discussed further.

Brigadier General (R) Galatas Ioannis, MD, PhD, MA, MC

Brigadier General (ret) Ioannis [John] Galatas was born in 1958 and graduated from the Military Medical Academy and the Medical School of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in 1982. He is specialized in Allergy and Clinical Immunology and for more than 25yrs he was the Head of the Dept of Allergy & Clinical Immunology at the Army General Hospital of Athens. Since 2001 he served as CBRN officer and planner trained in a number of countries abroad. During the 2004 Athens’ Olympic Games, he served as Commandant of the “Olympic Hospital CBRN Response Unit” specifically designed and deployed for the Games. He holds a PhD degree in Medicine and a Master’s Degree on “International Terrorism, Organized Crime and Global Security” from Coventry University, UK. A second PhD is in progress with Athens Medical School, Dept of Forensics and Toxicology. He is the Editor of the on-line “CBRNE-Terrorism Newsletter”. Since Aug 2010 he is the CBRN Scientific Coordinator at Research Institute of European-American Studies and holds the position of Vice Chairman of Greek Intelligence Studies Association. His last military appointment before his voluntarily retirement in August 2010 (after 35yrs in service), was as Head of the Department of Asymmetric Threats at the Intelligence Analysis Branch, of Joint Military Intelligence Division of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff in Athens.
 

Contact e-mail: igalatas@yahoo.com
Web : http://www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com