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Annals of Disaster Medicine
| ISSN:1684-193X
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Updated
July 18, 2003
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Contents:
Volume 2, Number 1; July, 2003 |
| Availability of Nerve Gas Antidotes at Emergency Pharmacy
in Taiwan |
| Chor-Min
Lin, MD; Hon-Ping Ma, MD; Tzong-Luen Wang, MD, PhD
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| Abstract
--Incident
chemical attack was one of the devastating man-made disasters. To
investigate the hospital stockpiling for nerve agent antidote, we
studied the safety deposit of atropine as an indicator in 10 emergency
response hospitals in Taipei. Two of them were tertiary medical
center, and the remaining eight secondary referral hospitals. The
average amount of safe deposit was calculated from January 2002
to December 2003 for each hospital. The amount of stockpile in the
two medical centers was higher than that of the other 8 response
hospitals (1650+110 mg v. 230+45 mg, P<0.01).
The average amount of atropine in all hospitals was 380+50
mg. In addition, the average time needed to supply additional antidotes
was 3+1 hours. The capacity of the treatment during attack
was estimated to be 2.6+0.2 persons per hour for each hospital.
Although the stockpile of these hospitals fulfilled the requirements
from Department of Health, they could not afford an adequate capacity
for a sarin event. In conclusion, our study revealed that the hospital
stockpiling of atropine is insufficient for incidental chemical
attack in Taiwan, the increase of hospital stockpile
or the implementation of in situ rapid synthesis method might be
a resolution.
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| Key words--- Incidental Chemical Attack; Nerve Agents;
Atropine; Hospital Stockpile |
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