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Anthrax Investigation: Anthrax Attacks Testing Very Limits of Public Health System

Aired October 24, 2001 - 08:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The anthrax attacks are testing the very limits of the public health system. From the CDC to your family doctor, this is all new territory, unlike anything they've had to deal with before. And as the nation's health care community gets a crash course on bioterrorism, we are reminded that any lagtime on the learning curve could be deadly.

For some insight now, we turn to Dr. David Ghilarducci of Michigan State University.

Glad to have you with us this morning, sir.

DR. DAVID GHILARDUCCI, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY: Glad to be here, Paula.

ZAHN: All right, so you just recently completed a study of our nation's hospitals and their ability to handle either biological warfare attacks or chemical attacks. What did you find?

GHILARDUCCI: Well, unfortunately, we found that the general preparedness of the emergency departments across the country is rather poor. We actually studied what would be the best prepared subset of hospitals in the country. These are level-one trauma centers, which are considered to be more or less they are connected to academic centers. They tend to be the center of academic thought and research, and they are considered community leaders in terms of medical advances, and our findings in that particular group, the best prepared group, if you will, was actually rather dismal. We found, for the most part, that hospitals really aren't prepared to safely deal with patients that may have arrived contaminated to the hospital front door or back door, if you will.

ZAHN: So what does that mean exactly? First of all, would they be able to recognize the symptoms? I mean, we just heard this horrible story of this poor postal worker dying from this Brentwood facility, who actually went to the hospital over the weekend and was sent back home and told he had the flu, and not too long afterward is found to have died from anthrax.

Is that the problem in recognizing the symptoms of exposure, this stuff, or the fact that the improper precautions were taken to even deliver the patient into the delivery room setting? GHILARDUCCI: That brings a very interesting point. I would like to make a small distinction between biological attacks and chemical attacks.

ZAHN: Very good distinction to make, yes.

GHILARDUCCI: Generally, the thought is at this point that if a chemical attack occurs, you will see people that, a, are aware that the attack happened, they are going to come to the emergency department; probably self-transport. They won't ever be seen by emergency personnel on the scene, and they may actually walk into emergency department waiting rooms with chemicals on them. The more likely scenario in the event of a biological attack is people actually showing up several days later with viral syndromes. They would be much like the flu in the case of anthrax, and it's going to require a lot of vigilance on myself and my colleague's part to actually recognize that this is happening.

ZAHN: So when you talk about the potential for victims to actually walk in with chemicals on them, actually you are talking about the need for the hospitals to prepare to help other patients with something that could potentially spread, right?

GHILARDUCCI: Exactly. In fact, I would consider, you know, if you think about the emergency response chain in our country, sort of, kind of, you can envision four links to this chain, the fire department, police, EMS being the first three links. The fourth link being the hospitals. I would consider the fourth link being weakest. That is our Achilles's Heel, if you will. The problem is that if people come contaminated to an emergency department, then it could result in the closure of that department, and all the medical staff there would be more or less incapacitated, and we can ill afford to lose any hospitals in a time of crisis like that.

ZAHN: Need a quick answer to this one. Based on the findings of your study, are you hopeful that changes will be made in hospital settings to improve the kind of response you are talking about?

GHILARDUCCI: Well, I'll tell you, since September 11th, we hit the ground running. We are doing a lot of work in terms of recognizing symptoms of biological weapons, but I think from the chemical weapons standpoint, which by the way, I would consider to be fairly more likely, I think we have a long way to go. It has to do with a recognition that hospitals are part of the public safety network, and it's going to require some investment on the part of the public, I think, to bring hospitals up to speed.

ZAHN: Well, we wish you luck and hope a lot of people are listening to the findings of your study.

Thank you, Dr. Ghilarducci, appreciate your time this morning.

GHILARDUCCI: Thank you.

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