Lt. Col. Jawad Kadhim, Iraq

Lt. Col. Jawad Kadhim is currently a part of the Iraqi Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Incident Response National Team. In January 2023, he participated in Integral Global’s Department of State (DOS) Chemical Security Program (CSP) – funded project at the MENATOX conference in Abu Dhabi that aimed to foster communication between Iraqi public health, emergency medicine, and law enforcement professionals during a chemical incident.

Through his career, Lt. Col. Jawad emphasizes the importance of a public health approach to chemical security events. Given that the goal of public health is to protect and improve the health of individuals and their communities and knowing that chemical hazards have significant effects on human health, a public health approach to chemical security is crucial. Specifically, Lt. Col. Jawad works to demonstrate how increasing CBRN threats pose a challenge to public health, and how the complexity of dealing with CBRN agents increases the difficulty of direct emergency response.

He explains how communication between CBRN accident response teams and all other agencies is necessary to ensure rapid response and reduce human and material losses as a result of chemical security incidents. Communication with public health agencies specifically amplifies knowledge related to disease, epidemics, and health risks of CBRN exposure as well as protocols for following-up on the health status of affected individuals required for screening, monitoring, diagnosis, decontamination, and protection.

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