We included reports of systems specifically designed to support the diagnosis of bioterrorism-relevant diseases or syndromes, as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (6).
We also recommend regular training of laboratory staff on procedures relevant to bioterrorism agent evaluation, including cross-training of selected staff not usually involved in the handling of suspected bioterrorism agents as part of a surge capacity plan.
This experience also highlighted the importance of regular training and updating of laboratory staff on procedures relevant to bioterrorism agent evaluation.
Of relevance to this work is understanding why topics relevant to biological weapons and bioterrorism are not currently taught, and the free text responses provide some insights into the possible reasons why this might be the case.
One such currently relevant danger is from bioterrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
From these, we included 115 reports of 78 potentially relevant systems for a bioterrorism response (55 detection systems and 23 diagnostic decision support systems).
Briefly, we reviewed reports of naturally occurring and bioterrorism-related outbreaks and solicited information from relevant experts to describe the detection and diagnostic decisions that clinicians and public health officials would have to make while responding to bioterrorism.
Although she lacks deep experience in drug- or food-safety issues, Dr. Hamburg was an infectious disease researcher and is an expert in bioterrorism and public preparedness, both of which seem keenly relevant.
To determine if individual undergraduate schools of medicine in the UK and the Republic of Ireland provide any teaching to medical students about biological weapons, bioterrorism, chemical weapons and weaponised radiation, if they perceive them to be relevant issues and if they figure them in their future plans.
The team electronically disseminated documents on anthrax and bioterrorism preparedness and collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) and its regional offices to facilitate exchanging relevant information.
Predicting how the mix of relevant factors would combine in a given situation to affect the recognition of a bioterrorism-related epidemic is difficult, although mathematical models may provide further insight (5 ).
