Bioterrorism

Ammara Ramzan, Ijaz Ashraf

Institute of Agri. Extension & Rural Development, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 

When we think about terrorism, immediately things which come in our minds are bomb blasting, firing and attack of human terrorist. Here I used the word “human terrorist” because there is another type of terrorism in which attackers are biological agents released by humans in order to cause disease or death in humans, animals or in plants. This type of terrorism is called Bioterrorism.  Bioterrorism is the intentional release of biological agents such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, insects or pest. Different diseases develop in organisms result in the death of number of organism. The major reason of bioterrorism is to harm the country by affecting its economy.

There are two possibilities, one is that biological agents are already present in nature; some changes are made in them to increase their capability to cause disease, increase their ability to reproduce, or to make them resistant to medicines which are used to cure diseases caused by them or to kill agents. The second possibility is that they can spread through water, air or through food. Effective spread of biological agent/disease is through airports because people of different nations can carry these biological agents with them and take to their countries.  Bioterrorism can be more dangerous because biological agents sometimes cannot be detected easily and they do not show symptoms of that particular disease for several hours to several days but agents are making roots. Some biological agents can spread from person to person.

 Bioterrorism agents are divided into three categories A, B, C, on the basis of their capability to spread, severity of disease they cause or the death by them. Category A includes those agents which are most dangerous to public health and country economy. These also result in high death rate, are easily spreadable and a country require proper actions to fight with them. Category B includes the agents which do not cause severe disease and have low death rate. Category C includes the agents on which work is being done or engineered for mass spread in future. They produce high mortality rate and have major health impact.  

Government should take steps to prepare people for bioterrorism, and in case of attack, should fight with diseases wisely to prevent maximum loss to living organisms (humans, plants or animals) and to economy. In case of disease attack on plants or on any specific crop prevention measures should be taken to eradicate the disease.