West Virginia University and the West Virginia National Guard are joining forces to prepare medical personnel to deal with weapons of mass destruction.

In a pact signed Thursday, Aug.10, the two organizations have agreed to combine their individual strengths to deal with the threat of terrorist attacks.

“Establishing a relationship between the West Virginia National Guard and WVU marks a real milestone in Americas ability to respond to weapons of mass destruction or similar events and greatly enhances the nations readiness and preparedness,”said Maj. Gen. Allen E. Tackett, National Guard adjutant general.”This agreement is a step toward bringing together the National Guards training capabilities at Camp Dawson and WVUs information and knowledge about medical response to natural disasters and terrorism attacks.”

An outcome of this partnership will be coordination of research and development agendas to address national needs and the technical resources necessary for readiness and preparedness, said Dr. John Weete, WVU associate provost for research.

“National medical preparedness for disruptions caused by bio-terrorism or natural disasters is critical,”Weete said.”There have been many studies and reports, including The Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act, the Federal Response Plan and a series of presidential directives and agency studies that identify the need for national preparedness. WVU is happy to join with the state National Guard in this effort.”

The agreement calls for collaboration in telecommunications, computer science, and medical and basic sciences expertise from WVU and disaster and military operations support from the state National Guard for knowledge development to enable planning and training for rapid response to weapons of mass destruction, bioterrorism, agri-terrorism and other similar events.

Specific areas of collaboration include WVUs development of the Virtual Medical Campus (VMC) and its high-speed telecommunications infrastructure and the state National Guards development of facilities at Camp Dawson to create a National Training Center for Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is the intent of the two organizations to collaborate and support each others programs to help prepare the medical and National Guard communities, as well as other related first responder and federal agency communities for incidents involving weapons of mass destruction materiel.

“A VMC presence at Camp Dawson will demonstrate the ability of the two institutions to support the medical community and other federal clients for terrorism response during high profile events such as presidential inaugurations or Olympic games,”Weete said.