Experts: Big Bucks Needed to Battle Bioterrorism

A panel of public health and information technology experts told a House subcommittee Dec. 14 that state and local governments will need additional funding to fully implement the information sharing infrastructure necessary to protect the nation from future bioterrorist attacks.

The full implementation of a public health infrastructure "will require a substantial funding investment by states that they can't bear alone," Rock Regan, president of the Lexington, Ky.-based National Association of State Chief Information Officers and Connecticut's chief information officers, told the subcommittee.

Regan said in a written statement submitted to the subcommittee that the Washington-based National Governors Association has estimated the cost of bioterrorism preparedness efforts and communications upgrades will cost states $3 billion in the first year alone.

The two organizations are working together to get funding from Congress and the administration to help states cope with the threat of bioterrorism.

The House Government Reform subcommittee on technology and procurement policy held the hearing to explore ways to improve information sharing among federal, state and local governments in the wake of anthrax attacks that occurred immediately following Sept. 11.

"The recent anthrax attacks showed the need to improve information-sharing capabilities of the disparate federal, state and local health authorities, as well as private hospitals," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., in a statement distributed at the hearing.

Pilot programs are under way in all 50 states for a backbone public health information sharing network called the Health Alert Network. The network provides instant communications among public health agencies and also serves as an electronic platform for the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, a data collection mechanism, and for Epi-X, a secure communications network.

The deployment of all of three systems "must be rapidly accelerated," said Paul Weisner, director of Illinois' DeKalb County Board of Health on behalf of the Washington-based National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Weisner said that without the infrastructure, local jurisdictions won't be able to address the information-sharing problems that members of the subcommittee and the witnesses were discussing.

Regan said the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System is a robust network that in his home sate of Connecticut would replace 18 separate "stovepipe" systems.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the linkages forged so far between the federal government and state and local jurisdictions are strong, but admitted that further enhancements to existing infrastructure and communications systems are necessary.

"The networks are in place, they are working and they will be expanded," Dr. Edward Baker, director of the public health program practice office at the CDC, told the subcommittee.

Baker said that the CDC had issued more than 175 updates in response to the anthrax attacks to more than 7 million health professionals as well as the public.

But there was not complete consensus from the witnesses.

Dr. Carol Sharrett, director of health for Fairfax County, Va., said the release of information from the CDC to state and local governments was slower than it should have been following each new anthrax incident and development.

Because the anthrax attacks unfolded slowly, this did not significantly impair the response by public health officials, she said.

Yet if there had been an outbreak of an infectious disease such as smallpox, then local jurisdictions such as Fairfax County would not have received the information fast enough to contain the disease, Sharrett said.