Knowledge Attitude and Preparedness among Different Health Professionals Towards Potential Bioterrorism Attacks

INTRODUCTION: The threat of bioterrorism, long ignored and denied, has heightened over the past few years. Bioterrorism is the malpractice of microbial agents and their products in-order to create terror or slay humans or animals. AIM: To assess the knowledge, attitude and preparedness regarding bioterrorism among dental, medical and nursing group of colleges in and around Visakhapatnam, India. MATERIALS AND METHOD: A descriptive cross-sectional study with structured self-administered questionnaire with 14 validated questions was done among 1,412 health care providers which includes medical and dental interns, postgraduates, nursing third and final year students and faculty that includes both the practitioners and academicians from 6 medical, 2 dental and 3 nursing colleges in and around Visakhapatnam, India. The data was analysed using, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test and Tukey’s post hoc test. RESULTS: On overall comparison among the three group of colleges, the knowledge, attitude and preparedness concerning bioterrorism is higher in medical colleges, followed by dental colleges and nursing colleges respectively that are statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Most of the study population are willing to help the government during the outbreak of bioterrorism but lack of knowledge is hindering them. Hence the curriculum of medical, dental and nursing colleges must be reformed and training courses are to be planned for better knowledge, preparedness and attitude of doctors as well as nurses