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Thursday, November 29, 2001
Fighting Bioterror Takes Big Thinking, Officials Say
By Mary Guiden, Staff Writer
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Texas State Senator Dianne White Delisi doesn't claim psychic powers, but she did have the foresight four years ago to urge a study on how prepared the Lone Star State was for a bioterrorism attack. How did her colleagues react? "I was met with chuckles when I floated that around," she says.
Delisi's fellow lawmakersand others across the countryare apt to take bioterror-related measures more seriously in upcoming legislative sessions. Health officials are urging them to look beyond bioterror and the threat of agents like anthrax to strengthen a public health system that has been in serious need of both financial and political support for years.
Public health deals not only with bioterrorism, but also with infectious disease like HIV/AIDS, chronic disease like asthma, environmental health, immunizations, injury prevention and occupational health and safety.
Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a Sept. 21 nationwide broadcast that strengthening the nation's public health system is his top priority. He identified seven priority areas for the system, which include workforce, laboratory capacity, information systems and policy and evaluation.
Koplan says if the country doesn't invest in public health on a broad scale, all Americans will suffer. "Either we are all protected or we are all at risk," he says.
Fulfilling Koplan's wish list means more money. A national anti-terrorism panel said on November 12 the CDC and other federal, state and local agencies lack resources to respond to a major crisis. The Bush Administration has earmarked $1.5 billion for public health in an anti-terrorism package now wending its way through Congress as part of the annual defense appropriation.
CDC's Ed Baker, who heads the group's Public Health Practice Program office, says the money and related efforts should be targeted in two places. "There are specific technical bioterrorism needs for (things like) labs and investigations," he says. "But there's a whole other range of threats that we need to be equally prepared for. That's going to be tough because we're preparing for things we don't know will happen."
As Washington State's Secretary of Health and president-elect of the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, Mary Selecky has been working on strengthening the state's public health system for nearly ten years.
Selecky says one of the most important lessons she has learned is the need for flexible spending. "Eight years ago the Legislature gave us (what we call) local capacity development funds. Local communities tell us at the state level what the needs areas are, which can be anything from communicable diseases to environmental health or access to care. Then those communities must explain to us what a difference investing in the areas has made," she says.
Selecky agrees a big picture response is needed for the current bioterrorism threats. "For public health protection, you have to be in it for the long haul. An infusion of one time money that gets pulled away means you do very little," she says. ![]() ![]()
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