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U.S. Response II: Pentagon Monitors Disease Outbreaks A U.S. Defense Department initiative implemented after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is currently monitoring medical information from more than 300 military medical facilities around the world, the Pentagon said in press release yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 5). The Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics, known as ESSENCE, monitors 313 U.S. military medical centers to detect disease outbreaks before they spread, said Army physician Col. Patrick Kelly. The program compares incoming medical reports to old statistics, Kelly said. The effort began as a pilot project in the Washington area, but was expanded in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he added. ESSENCE II, a partnership between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, monitors medical information from civilian hospitals in the United States as well as school absenteeism and veterinary hospitals. “We will really be doing our job if we have systems that are sensitive enough to pick up problems early,” Kelly said (Gerry Gilmore, Defense Department release, Dec. 17).
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