Health Systems Called Unprepared
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
02:23 PM ET 09/22/99
WASHINGTON (AP) - Local public health systems remain ill-prepared to respond to
potential biological or chemical terrorist attacks, emergency management and medical
officials told a House subcommittee. An administration official, acknowledging the
situation, said the Department of Health and Human Services was working hard to improve
it.
``Public health is a critical component of a comprehensive response plan, yet,
collectively, we are far from where we need to be to have an integrated response
capability in every state,'' Ellen Gordon, immediate past president of the National
Emergency Management Association, told the House Government Reform Committee panel on
national security, veterans affairs and international relations.
Gordon, also the administrator of Iowa's emergency management division, said
state emergency management directors believe there are a variety of reasons why most state
public health systems are unprepared. Among them, she said, are lack of coordination among
medical, emergency management and law enforcement agencies, and little capacity to detect
a potentially deadly biological attack soon after it occurs.
``States need the immediate help of Congress and the federal government to bring
the public health system up to an appropriate level of readiness,'' Gordon said.
A Senate committee heard similar testimony at a hearing in June 1998.
Joseph Waeckerle, chairman of the American College of Emergency Physicians'
Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Task Force, said many plans are based on a model that
does not address biological agents, which require a different response from what would be
used for a chemical spill or attack.
Training emergency health care personnel to recognize and respond to such
attacks is needed, as well as a central federal office to coordinate planning, he said.
Most health care providers lack the knowledge or ``level of suspicion'' to
detect a biological attack and, without it, ``our country will be missing a critical link
in the appropriate management of a terrorist attack,'' Waeckerle said.
Robert Knouss, director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness at HHS, said his
office was helping local jurisdictions by creating Metropolitan Medical Response Systems.
Contracts have been awarded to 47 metropolitan areas to plan their response to a release
of chemical or biological weapons, he said. The administration's fiscal 2000 budget
request contains funding for 25 more cities. The nation's largest 120 metropolitan areas
eventually will have such plans.
``I cannot tell you that the nation is prepared to deal with the large-scale
medical effects of terrorism,'' Knouss said. ``But we are working very diligently to
prepare local medical systems and public health infrastructures.''
