“Orange Flame,” a detailed simulation of a biological terror attack, will be held this week in Israel, and will affect three participating hospitals in the center of the country.
The exercise is managed by the Home Front Command and the Health Ministry in Ramle, but it will also occur in several other locales. The hospitals affected by the drill will be the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Tzifrin, the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, and the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, JPost.com reports.
Several organizations, including the Israel Police, the Defense Ministry, Magen David Adom and the L. Greenberg Center for Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, will participate.
The annual Orange Flame exercise, now it its fifth year, has been planned over several months to ready hospitals and other facilities to be able to cope with a biological emergency and to be able to coordinate among several groups of authorities, an IDF spokesman told JPost.com.
The scenario is kept secret for the exercise so that the participants will be surprised like a true emergency. The participating hospitals will need to discover the biological agent and cope with the situation. Hundreds of simulated injured victims will need to be treated after “poisoning” by the biological agents while rescuers will wear special equipment and “decontaminate” the victims.