National

Health Ministry's contingency plan

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI May 28. With the threat of a war looming large, the Union Health Ministry is preparing a comprehensive contingency plan to meet any eventuality, including a nuclear strike.

Considering that unlike in the past, there is a threat of the enemy forces using nuclear weapons, the plan would focus on putting in place a mechanism to mitigate the effects of a nuclear strike.

The action plan would also lay emphasis on how to deal with attacks using biological and chemical agents, since in the wake of the September 11 attack in the U.S. there are growing apprehensions over the possibilities of such attacks.

Highly-placed sources said the Ministry was in touch with the Department of Atomic Energy and the Ministry of Environment and Forest since the Ministry's in-house expertise was largely confined to dealing with disasters of biological origin.

This was because under the allocation of official business, the DAE was the nodal agency for nuclear disasters and the Environment Ministry for chemical disasters.

The contingency plan, expected to be ready by the weekend, would dovetail the in-house expertise of the Ministry along with that of the DAE and the Environment Ministry.

The plan would spell out measures to be taken by the State Governments in preparing public buildings such as schools to function as temporary hospitals. This, the sources said, was necessary as the infrastructure available with regular medical institutions may not be adequate to deal with any sudden influx of large-scale casualties.

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