Discussion

Relevant guidance and tools to combat biological incidents or attacks is becoming increasingly relevant due to current global health threats such as the war in Israel-Gaza. Attacks involving biological substances, although rare, can affect large groups of a population and affect multiple countries simultaneously. Biological substances are used as they can spread quickly in the environment without being easily detected. Moreover, non-intentional events involving these substances can also challenge healthcare systems, resulting in high morbidity and mortality levels in the absence of appropriate preparedness and resources, highlighting the importance of having appropriate capacity, capabilities and trained personnel, to quickly respond to these events. Thus, technical guidance and resources should be available as part of the biological preparedness that all governments should establish, so first responders can tailor robust recovery strategies to minimise the number of people exposed and remediate the environment to avoid future exposures to the hazards released.
The aim of this workshop is to introduce participants to available guidance and methods in the UK Recovery Handbook for Biological Incidents (UKRHBI; Pottage et al., 2015) for tailoring effective protection, decontamination and remediation strategies to respond to these events, which has been developed by Public Health England (now UK Health Security Agency) in collaboration with other UK Government Departments, Agencies and local authorities. The UKRHBI provides a series of protection and recovery options to decontaminate biological hazards in the environment; the user is able to select options using up-to-date information about the physiological characteristics and the life cycle of the pathogen. Participants will use the UKRHBI to develop a basic protection and environmental recovery/restoration plan to protect human health following an outbreak of infection due to Cyclospora cayetanensis. The workshop will cover: Relevance of biological incidents. Introduction to the PHE guidance (UKRHBI) and tool (Recovery Record Form). Attendees will be given a workbook and data so they can easily complete the scenario proposed.