Biological emergenciesBiological emergences: Incremental progress not enough
While acknowledging some positive efforts over the past year by the White House and Congress, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense says the incremental progress is not enough to defend against biological emergencies, let alone catastrophic events. The report, Biodefense Indicators – One Year Later, Events Outpacing Federal Efforts to Defend the Nation, states that while the biological threat is real and continues to grow, our nation remains woefully under-prepared for dangerous biological incidents.
While acknowledging some positive efforts over the past year by the White House and Congress, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense says the incremental progress is not enough to defend against biological emergencies, let alone catastrophic events. The report, Biodefense Indicators – One Year Later, Events Outpacing Federal Efforts to Defend the Nation, states that while the biological threat is real and continues to grow, our nation remains woefully under-prepared for dangerous biological incidents.
During remarks the other day before the National Healthcare Coalition Preparedness Conference, Co-chair Tom Ridge, the nation’s first Secretary of Homeland Security, said the Panel welcomes the opportunity to work with President-Elect Trump and leaders of the 115th Congress to make biodefense a national priority.
“The fact is that the federal government continues to be much better organized and able to address threats posed by other weapons of mass destruction than biological weapons,” said Ridge. “And emergent diseases obviously challenge our country and the world. Zika revealed weaknesses in U.S. resilience to outbreaks and the health of the U.S. population. We do not sufficiently prioritize funding in advance, we are unable to rapidly develop, approve, and field the medical countermeasures we need, and we politicize our responses to these events. All of this renders us weak, even while biological events increasingly threaten the nation.
“The burden now falls on the new Administration and Congress to take up – and overcome – this challenge. Nevertheless, they do not need to start from scratch. We have for them a blueprint for biodefense and welcome the opportunity to work together to put it into action.”
The Panel assessed biodefense efforts across the spectrum from prevention to recovery, and developed detailed recommendations for the federal government to improve and optimize these efforts. In its first report, released one year ago, the Panel put forward thirty-three recommendations and eighty-seven action items which, if implemented, would dramatically and quickly improve biodefense. They addressed the need for enhanced federal coordination, optimized collaboration with non-federal partners (particularly in the private sector), and timely adoption of innovative solutions for technological and governance challenges.
