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U.S Remains Vulnerable to Bioattack
Warnings continue that the United States is unprepared for a bioterrorist attack despite a $20 billion increase in preparedness funding since 2001, USA Today reported today (see GSN, July 13). “We're almost four years after 9/11, and we've made maybe six months’ worth of progress,” said Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “We’re wasting billions and billions of dollars.” “This challenge is larger than almost anything we’ve ever faced,” said William Raub, head of public health emergency preparedness at the Health and Human Services Department. While admitting the government is not close to being adequately prepared, Raub said “I don’t think anyone here has anything to apologize for.” Local governments are not capable to delivering bioterror countermeasures to citizens after they have been taken from the national stockpile. “Not a single city in America is prepared,” said Richard Falkenrath, a former White House homeland security official. Also, development of new drugs and vaccines to combat a bioterrorism attack has been slow despite available funding from Project Bioshield. Drug companies, fearful of lawsuits, have not developed the products despite guarantees from the government that the drug would be purchased, according to USA Today. Finally, hospitals are not ready for the surge of patients that would follow an attack. “Hospital preparedness is an exercise in fantasy,” said Jerome Hauer, former Health and Human Services preparedness director. “Most people think having 100 beds is surge capacity. But most cities, if they were to have 10,000-15,000 patients, would be brought to their knees” (Mimi Hall, USA Today, Aug. 1). Meanwhile, Health and Human Services is working on a plan to get drugs from the national stockpile into the public’s hands after an attack, USA Today reported. Raub said the stockpile has enough drugs to treat up to 60 million people for anthrax, and that these drugs can be delivered to any city in the United States within 12 hours. No city has prepared a plan to quickly distribute the drugs, Raub said. Health and Human Services last year created the Cities Readiness Initiative, a $27 million, 21-city program designed on improving local preparedness. The public health system is “one of the weakest links in our national defense,” said Shelley Hearne, director of the Trust for America’s Health. The U.S. Postal Service is being considered to deliver drugs to communities, according to USA Today. Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan said postal workers have given the idea “varying degrees of enthusiasm.” “We stand ready to assist,” he said. “Letter carriers feel as though we’re on the front lines anyway after the anthrax attacks.” The government also needs to work out plans for setting up and staffing distribution centers where drugs would be given to the public. This could be difficult, as in 2003 the government largely failed to persuade health-care workers to be vaccinated against smallpox so that the workers could remain uninfected and distribute vaccines, USA Today reported. Only 38,000 workers ended up taking the smallpox vaccine, well short of the government’s goal of 500,000. Many were scared off by potential side effects of the vaccine, and Raub said a safer vaccine is “a couple of years off anyway.” Cities are also challenged to come up with plans for quarantines. “Some of the cities are still shaking their heads” at the difficulty of the task, Raub said (Mimi Hall, USA Today II, Aug. 1).
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