TFAH Releases 2010 Agroterrorism Report
Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have issued their eighth annual report, Ready or Not? Protecting the Public from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, which warns that financial woes threaten recent gains made in public health protection. According to a December 14, 2010, TFAH press release, no state scored lower than five on 10 key indicators of public health preparedness, with three states scoring a perfect 10. But the report also cautioned that these developments are now “in real jeopardy due to severe budget cuts by federal, state, and local governments.”
In particular, TFAH noted that “10 states do not have an electronic syndromic surveillance system that can report and exchange information to rapidly detect disease outbreaks,” while “21 states were not able to rapidly identify disease-causing E.coli O157:H7 and submit the lab results in 90 percent of cases within four days.” The report also identified “ongoing major gaps in emergency health preparedness,” including (i) gaps in funding and infrastructure; (ii) the lack of an integrated, national approach to biosurveillance; (iii) an insufficient number of adequately trained public health experts; (iv) gaps in vaccine and pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing; (v) the inability to expand normal health services during an emergency; and (vi) gaps in community resiliency support.
