Newswise — ST. LOUIS -- As the country prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks, how prepared would we be for another attack? Despite tremendous efforts right after 9-11 to increase funding and training for health care workers and first responders, there has been less emphasis placed on preparedness efforts in recent years, says Greg Evans, Ph.D., director of the Saint Louis University Institute for Biosecurity.
“My fear is that we’ve become very complacent about the next terrorist attack. And I definitely think we will have one. It’s inevitable. We’re going to be less prepared as the years move forward if the country continues to cut funding for these efforts,” Evans said.
Evans is a modern-day Paul Revere. In 2000, he created the Center for the Study of Bioterrorism (now the Institute for Biosecurity) at Saint Louis University. He immediately went to work warning public health officials about the threat of bioterrorism, or terrorist attacks using biological agents such as anthrax, ricin or small pox. But his warnings fell on deaf ears.
In a national survey Evans conducted just months before 9-11, 75 percent of public health officials said that they thought a bioterrorist attack was likely to strike a U.S. city in the next five years. But only 2 percent of those surveyed thought the attack would happen in their city.
So Evans and his team went to work creating fact sheets and other training materials to prepare public health officials. After 9-11 and the subsequent anthrax letter scare, the center was flooded with requests for the materials.
“We were getting thousands of requests to provide our factsheets and information because there was just nothing else out there; no one else was working in this area. More and more communities were becoming worried about another bioterrorism event and they wanted to be prepared for it,” Evans said.
Post 9-11: Preparing for the next attack
According to Evans, in the years following 9-11, the government made significant progress in preparing for future terrorist attacks. State and local health departments received funding to hire individuals with expertise in bioterrorism. Almost every major health department set up a section to deal with bioterrorism threats. First responders also received funding for equipment and training to respond to terrorist attacks.
As the years have gone by, however, the emphasis has shifted more to pandemic planning and many of the people who were hired to work on bioterrorism were moved over to the area of infectious diseases.
“In recent years there has been less emphasis on bioterrorism, but terrorist organizations are still thinking very strongly about using biological agents. A recent New York Times article indicated that they are looking at the potential of using ricin in backpack bombs,” Evans said.
“It’s understandable from a psychological standpoint. We don’t want to think about these bad things and the further away we get from 9-11 and the anthrax letters, the less we’re going to focus on them. But that doesn’t make the threat any less real,” Evans said.
About the Institute for Biosecurity
Since 9-11, the Institute for Biosecurity at SLU has shifted its focus to providing advanced education and training for individuals working in public health, physicians, emergency management professionals, law enforcement and related professions. The Institute offers two master’s degree programs in biosecurity and disaster preparedness, one with a more specific public health focus, as well as a Ph.D. program. Evans says he was pleasantly surprised by the response to the program, which rapidly grew to over 90 students.
The program is the only program that combines public health preparedness with a strong emphasis on bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases. Because it is taught online, students have completed it from around the country and outside the United States. They have even had students work on their degrees while serving in the military in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Accredited since 1991, Saint Louis University School of Public Health remains the only accredited school of public health in Missouri. It is one of 46 fully accredited public health schools in the U.S. and the only accredited Jesuit or Catholic school in the nation.
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