"Disaster Preparedness: States aren't ready for major disaster or attack, group says"

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

States' disaster plans assessed
Report criticizes health readiness
"Right now, we have many states that at best are at C- level where we need
an 'A' performance."
Shelly Hearne of the Trust for America's Health 
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN
The Kansas City (MO) Star


WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, it was the states' turn to be in the hot seat.

One day after the federal government got failing grades for doing little to
improve national security since Sept. 11, 2001, a public health advocacy
group said that most states had failed to adequately reform their disaster
response systems.

"We have a long string of reality calls, from Katrina to - anthrax," said
Shelly Hearne, whose group, the Trust for America's Health, wrote the
report. "Mother Nature and terrorists made it very real as to how important
these issues are."

More than half the states, including Missouri and Kansas, met five or fewer
of the report's 10 indicators of public health preparedness. Those
shortcomings included being unprepared for chemical terrorism or unable to
ensure that health-care workers could continue to work during a major
disease outbreak.

Most states had too many vulnerabilities and not enough strengths to
adequately counter a natural disaster, pandemic virus or bioterrorist
attack, the report said.

Richard Morrissey, deputy director of the Kansas Division of Health, said
the report gave the state a "pretty good score," though he disagreed with
some judgments on its preparedness.

These included whether Kansas labs were adequately equipped to handle a
chemical terror threat, and whether all of the state's hospitals should be
able to handle the demands of a disaster. Morrissey said the state relied on
a regional approach, because it has so many small hospitals.

Spence Jackson, a spokesman for Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, said health
officials were studying the report. But he said the state had significantly
improved its "ability to respond to threats of all kinds, including terror
threats, disease outbreaks and natural disasters."

The trust's report didn't spare the federal government, either. After
surveying 20 public health and bioterrorism experts, it gave the Bush
administration and Congress a D+ for overall disaster preparedness. It found
poor leadership, coordination among agencies and planning for pandemic flu.

The critical report came after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States, commonly called the Sept. 11 commission, issued its
final report, warning that Washington had failed to put in place reforms to
fend off another terrorist attack.

"With back-to-back reports on the national state of affairs and the states'
capabilities to fight biological terrorism, we're barely crawling, while
al-Qaida is rapidly changing every single day," said commission member Tim
Roemer.

The Trust for America's Health's has investigated various public health
issues, including childhood vaccines, and has been an early voice warning of
the potential dangers of avian flu.

In its third review of disaster preparedness since Sept. 11, the trust noted
"considerable progress," but said state efforts were lacking money,
accountability and performance standards.

"Right now, we have many states that at best are at C- level where we need
an 'A' performance," said Hearne, the trust's executive director. "We've
been taking little baby steps rather than a full sprint."

Among the report's findings:

   � Only seven states and two cities (New York and Chicago) were prepared
to distribute vaccines and antidotes in an emergency.

   � More than a quarter of the states have inadequate bioterrorism
laboratory response capabilities; nearly 20 percent don't have enough
scientists to manage tests for anthrax, the plague or both; and only 10
states have public health labs sufficiently capable to respond to chemical
terrorism.

   � Hospitals in nearly a third of the states are not adequately prepared
to use other resources, such as community centers and hotels, in the event
of a surge of extra patients. A similar number of hospitals also have not
adequately planned how to prioritize the distribution of vaccines and
antiviral medicine to their workers.

   � Hospitals in more than 40 percent of the states don't have enough
backup supplies to meet a surge of extra patients during an infectious
disease outbreak.

"We need to stop shrugging our shoulders and start rolling up our sleeves,"
said Lowell Weicker, Jr., of Connecticut, the trust's board president and a
former U.S. senator and governor. "The response to Hurricane Katrina was a
sharp indictment of America's emergency response capabilities. We need to
get real in our planning for health emergencies."


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