The EpiShuttle improves patient safety and care, the safety for health care providers, reduce costs and increase operational efficiency.
Recently we celebrated the 26th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention, but more than 86 tons of chemical weapons still exist. Do chemical weapons still pose a great risk?
April 7th 2018, an Mi-8/17 helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force dropped a yellow cylinder on the rooftop floor of a three-story residential building in Douma rapidly releasing toxic chlorine gas. It quickly dispersed within the building, killing 43 named individuals, and affecting dozens more.
“Unfortunately, some of these chemical warfare agents are easy to produce and store. They can still be produced, and then used by military or non-governmental groups. Some of them you can’t see, some of them you can’t smell, and they don’t give any warning. But the impact is devastating – the victims are burned, blinded, or suffocated. Death is rarely immediate and never painless”, MD PhD Fridtjof Heyerdahl said. He was on a mission to Damascus after the sarin attacks in 2013.
First responders’ mission ready
Last week the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), overseeing the Chemical Weapons Convention, trained professionals to respond in the aftermath of an attack involving chemical warfare agents in Madrid.
At the OPCW event in Spain, doctors train on using new technology, like the EpiShuttle. This is a sealed unit that allows quick isolation and transportation of those who have been exposed to CBRN agents.
“Preparedness is important for both civil accidents and intentional incidents in any modern society”, Heyerdahl said. Heyerdahl founded EpiGuard, the medical technology firm behind the EpiShuttle, where he now serves as chief medical officer, in addition to his work at the Oslo University hospital, the University of Oslo, and his missions with WHO and the ICRC.
Heyerdahl recently came back from an ICRC mission in Ukraine.
“It was an apocalyptic place; the destruction was unimaginable. You only see scenes like this in apocalyptic movies or video games. The sort of war fought in Ukraine, targeting the military and civil population alike, is something we thought of a thing of the past. The world now fears the use of chemical weapons in conflict”, Heyerdahl said.
The OPCW Secretariat has received from both the Russian Federation and Ukraine, correspondence regarding threats of use of toxic chemicals as weapons. OPCW remains ready to assist any State Party upon its request, in case of use or threat of use of chemical weapons. Both Russian Federation and Ukraine, are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Risk of chemical weapons in the Ukraine war
Syria and its Russian allies vehemently denied that Assad’s forces had been responsible for any chemical attack. A disinformation campaign by the Russian federation and a number of high-profile online activists produced numerous blog posts and in podcasts, claiming that the evidence was fabricated, that corpses were arranged at the site, and that children seen foaming at the mouth were faking their symptoms. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), overseeing the Chemical Weapons Convention dismissed these theories, providing extensive refutations in a report earlier this year.
Bonnie Jenkins, the US State Department’s undersecretary for arms control and international security commented the OPCW report: “not only makes a thorough case of the Assad regime’s responsibility for the chemical weapons attack” but also “describes how closely the Syrian regime and Russia were coordinating at the time of the attack.”
After a mission with the ICRC in Mariupol Ukraine, transporting civilians out of the Azovstal steelwork, Heyerdahl witnessed no difficult or complicated medical situations, but he still worries:
“Our job was to safeguard the civilians out of the steel plant, and my role was also to go around the tents and care for those who needed help. Lack of medications for conditions such as diabetes caused some concern, but on this mission, we had no major medical situations. For conflicts in general, the use of chemicals is a significant worry. Still, Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan has not signed the CWC. Also, world leaders continue to fear chemical weapons in the hands of non-state actor groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda” Heyerdahl said.
Today, it has been 26 years since the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (CWC) came into force. Since then, the convention is the most successful disarmament treaty eliminating weapons of mass destruction in history.
Hard to celebrate
The anniversary of CWC is worth celebrating because the organization represents results that were only possible through extensive international cooperation between the 193 member states. Since its conception, more than 4300 inspections of industrial chemical facilities have been conducted, 98 % of the global population now live under the protection of the convention and 99 % of the chemical weapons stockpiles declared by possessor states have been verifiably destroyed.
On the other hand, there are setbacks that make it impossible to be content, even with all these wins. As this year also marks Syria´s 10-year anniversary of being a signee since 2013, signing the convention is clearly not the same as preventing attacks from happening.
