In the event of a terrorist attack from a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) (chemical, biological, or blast) or a major natural disaster, it is likely that state and local jurisdictions will rapidly deplete the supplies of pharmaceuticals and other medical items they hold to protect and treat their citizens. Anticipating that likelihood, the Federal Government established the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) to augment local supplies of critical medical items. The NPS contains large quantities of medicines, antidotes, and medical supplies needed to respond to a wide range of expected problems including nerve agents such as Sarin and biological agents such as anthrax, plague, and tularemia.

RTI developed NPS for the Logistics Management Institute (LMI) under contract by LMI in the capacity of providing system and software development and design services to LMI. LMI owns all of the rights to this package, but it is a demonstration of the capabilities that RTI can provide in systems development to your organization for mission critical applications. Jointly created by the Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this software will help state and local jurisdictions create a plan for quickly delivering NPS material to those who need it in an emergency. Hereafter we refer to the software as the “Planning Tool” or simply as “The Tool”.

The Plan that state and local jurisdictions create must address and coordinate all or part of the following functions:

• Command and control—to initiate a request for the NPS and to coordinate its delivery with on going emergency actions.
• NPS request—to justify the local need for the NPS and thus its delivery.
• Material management—to manage the receipt, inventory, staging, repackaging, movement, and replenishment of NPS material.
• Receipt and staging—to physically accept the NPS from the federal government and to stage it by repackaging, dispensing, treatment and other delivery points.
• Material movement—to deliver NPS material to required delivery points.
• Repackaging—to repackage bulk NPS oral pharmaceuticals into individual regiments as dictated by health and emergency management authorities.
• Dispensing—to provide oral prophylactic drugs to those who have been exposed or who are worried that they were exposed.
• Treatment—to identify where health authorities intend to treat victims to ensure NPS material deliveries are timely and adequate.
• Security—to ensure protection, crowd control, and traffic control for the people, processes, and equipment that distribute NPS material.
• Communications—to provide the information that all other NPS functions require to operate effectively.

The Planning Tool asks a series of detailed questions for each of the above functions and provides space for the entry of your answers. When you are done, The Tool will print a Microsoft Word document that you can easily incorporate in your All Hazards and/or Bioterrorism plan.