Mitigating the risk of an anthrax attack with medical countermeasures

Abstract

This chapter presents a simulation model that can be used to prepare for a bioterrorism attack that releases anthrax spores and exposes thousands of persons to this deadly disease. The model predicts the expected number of deaths using information about the size of the population, the number exposed, the progress of the disease, the resources available for distributing medication and treating the ill, and the size of local medication stockpiles. The chapter also presents a risk management approach for allocating a limited medication stockpile to multiple cities to minimize the expected number of deaths. The results show that the optimal allocation can be quite different from allocations that are proportional to population size.