Health officials readying for the G-8 say stockpiles of antidotes for chemical agents and portable decontamination chambers will help treat Calgarians after riots or terrorist attacks.
Five portable decontamination tents, worth up to $40,000 each, will be ready to be rolled out at each of the city's hospitals plus the 8th and 8th Clinic.
Inflated and operational in just 30 minutes, the portable tents will be used if they're needed over and above permanent $30,000 decontamination systems in the hospitals and clinic.
"I think it's a different world since Sept. 11," said Steve Long, director of pharmacy services for the Calgary Health Region.
Ten times the amount of antidotes for pesticide and nerve agent exposures will be stocked for the G-8 -- and permanently afterwards, said Long, noting it's now a two-month supply up from from two weeks.
Heart attack and trauma treatments, biological antibiotics -- like ciprofoxacin which treats anthrax -- are also being stockpiled along with drugs to treat for pepper spray or tear gas, used by police in riot crowd control.
"We have to be prepared for any eventuality," said Norma Wood, G-8 project leader for the health region.
"What we want to make sure doesn't happen is we end up caught and people say, 'after the terror attacks of Sept. 11 you should have known this kind of thing could happen.' "
But officials are hoping for the best, and experience with other summits shows few people ever need medical care, Wood said, noting just 100 went to hospital after the Summit of the Americas riots in Quebec City last year.
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