State and local officials say not all cities are prepared to respond to a bioterrorist attack. A recent federal report indicates more coordination is needed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
State and local officials say not all cities are prepared to respond to a bioterrorist attack. A recent
federal report indicates more coordination is needed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:
Federal agencies need to set benchmarks that define what is adequate protection from
bioterrorism and need to develop a way for cities and states to evaluate and share useful solutions.
Those are recommendations from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of
Congress. The GAO found that state and local officials reported deficiencies in the number of
people needed, the coordination needed and the labs needed to address such things as
bioterrorism attacks or even new infectious diseases that can spread rapidly such as the West Nile
Virus or SARS. The GAO says the Department of Health and Human Services needs to work
with the Department of Homeland Security to get guidelines to state and local officials so that
they know what’s needed to protect the health of their residents.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.