The Importance of Self-Care in Bioterrorism Attacks

Bioterrorism is the deliberate release of highly pathogenic biological agents including a variety of microorganisms or biological toxins that kill a large number of people. By training self-care programs about bioterrorism, the severe effects and consequences of bioterrorism actions can be reduced to some extent. The present study outlines the importance and role of self-care programs in bioterrorism attacks.

In this review, published papers related to self-care programs in bioterrorism attacks were searched in the library resources and databases of Google, SID, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Civilica and the CDC website from 2015 to 2020. Keywords of microbial agents, bioterrorism, biological warfare, self-care and self-rescue, bioluminescence, nanosensor and detector and training were used. The retrieved papers were critically reviewed and evaluated in line with the objectives of the study.

A total of 186 papers were found in the search. After excluding the papers without full text, 91 articles remained. In the screening stage, 34 papers were removed due to the non-relevance of the title and abstracts. Then 23 papers were removed due to invalid methodology, inconsistency of title and text, and finally, 34 papers were critically evaluated.

Considering the effective role of training in self-care programs to deal with bioterrorism agents; it is recommended that in addition to the national media, these programs be included in the curriculum of all academic disciplines