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U.S. Continues to Lack Disease Response Capabilities, GAO Finds
U.S. states and cities have improved their ability to responds to public health emergencies, such as bioterrorist attacks, but significant gaps in readiness remain, a congressional researcher testified yesterday (see GSN, April 8, 2003). “No state is fully prepared to respond to a major public health threat,” Janet Heinrich, the General Accounting Office’s top health care analyst, said in prepared testimony. Nor has any single “aspect of preparedness … been fully addressed by all of the states,” she said. Heinrich praised the progress states have made, but highlight several areas requiring improvement, including: * Disease surveillance. “The nation’s ability to detect and report a disease outbreak is not uniformly strong across all states,” she said; * Laboratory capacity. “Only about half of the states reported that they have at least one public health laboratory within the state that has the appropriate instrumentation and appropriately trained staff to conduct certain tests for rapidly detecting and correctly identifying biological agents,” Heinrich said; and * Communication. The ability of public health officials, health care providers and emergency management agencies to communicate “remains a challenge,” she said (GAO release, Feb. 12).
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