US: Prepared, but work ahead
ATLANTA (AP) - February 20, 2008 "I think in terms of effort and progress, an 'A,"' said Dr.
Richard Besser of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
when asked to assign a letter grade.
"In terms of amount of work to be done, I would say that's
absolutely enormous," he added.
It was the government's first assessment of the payoff from its
investment of more than $5 billion since the terrorist attacks of
2001 to make the country better prepared for a variety of public
health emergencies.
The report looked at the staffing, laboratory capability and
other resources of state, local and territorial health departments
for handling bioterrorism or other disasters.
The number of state and local health departments able to detect
biological agents grew to 110 in 2007, up from 83 in 2002. Labs
able to detect chemical agents increased to 47, from zero in 2001,
the CDC found.
All states are now doing year-round flu surveillance - an
important measure if the bird flu virus in Asia mutates into a more
dangerous form easily spread among people, unleashing a worldwide
epidemic.
Information sharing between labs and public health professionals
has grown tremendously. And the count of illness-investigating
epidemiologists assigned to emergency response rose to 232 in 2006,
from 115 in 2001.
"Clearly we are better able to handle most public health events
in this country today then we were in 2001, and that's very good
news," said Michael Osterholm, a University Of Minnesota
infectious disease expert.
Some of the bad news: Many states still do not have enough
epidemiologists, and 31 states said they're having trouble
attracting qualified lab scientists. Laws need to be updated, and
disease surveillance data exchange appears to be inadequate in at
least 16 states.
Other public health experts said federal funding is also a
problem. The CDC's funding to state and local health departments
for emergency preparedness dropped from $991 million in fiscal year
2006 to $897 million in fiscal 2007, according to the CDC report.
The agency did not release more recent figures. But some public
health experts noted budget request figures that show a steady
drop, including a proposed $609 million for fiscal 2009.
"You can't expect states to be doing better if the federal
government keeps cutting funding," said Jeff Levi, executive
director of Trust for America's Health, a Washington-based public
health research organization.
CDC officials said this is the first of what will be an annual
series of reports on state and local emergency preparedness.
Trust for America's Health has evaluated state preparedness five
times in annual reports. Among the findings in the last report,
released in December: Seven states had yet to participate in a
federal program to buy antivirals for a potential flu pandemic and
13 did not have adequate plans to distribute vaccines and medical
supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile.
That organization's report is a bit more sweeping, and is a
complement to the CDC report, said Besser, director of the CDC's
Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency
Response.
---
On the Net:
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov