CDC Describes Plan to Respond to Potential Bioterror Attacks on U.S. Soil |
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In response to growing concerns about the potential for terrorist attacks on the United States homeland, DFF held three forums addressing the issue. The first speaker was Donna Knutson, the senior advisor to the Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. She addressed the topic: “Responding to Potential Bioterror Attacks on U.S. Soil” by highlighting the terrorism and preparedness activities of the agency and the five programs established to prepare for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response is responsible to ensure that all communities are protected from infectious, environmental, and terrorist threats. There are nine preparedness goals that the agency has adopted. One is to ensure that there is a decrease in the time needed to classify a health event as terrorism or just an outbreak. Knutson explained that we “want to make sure that we are doing this faster and better.” She said their budget increased significantly since 911 to deal with increases for the Strategic National Stockpile; anthrax research and vaccine research; and a bio-surveillance initiative, which takes average everyday data from pharmacists and hospitals to determine if there has been an outbreak or attack. Under bio-surveillance CDC is trying to move up to 25 quarantine stations, which will make it possible to stop ill individuals from coming into this country from other countries or even coming back to this country contaminated.
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To improve communications at CDC, private and public funds were used to build an emergency operation center that is now the communications hub of CDC. Knutson pointed out that since 2002, this operations center has dealt with anthrax attacks, small pox vaccination, West Nile virus, monkey pox, SARS, mad cow disease, Avian influenza issues, the influenza vaccine shortage and Marburg as well as six hurricanes in six weeks out of the emergency operations center, and finally, the influenza shortage of 2004. Twelve-hour push packs are huge volumes of crates and cases of material that are stored in the United States in 12 secret locations. Once a governor or mayor or the President calls, these crates can be delivered to any site in the United States within 12 hours. They contain medicine, medical supplies, ventilators, bandages, and all the antibiotics that could possibly be needed and fit into one 747. “On September 11th, there were only two planes in the air: one was the President and one was the stockpile,” explained Knutson. The vendor-managed inventory is medications that vendors hold for CDC mostly antibiotics like Cipro and doxycycline. The stockpile-managed inventory is at CDC and includes vaccines and some antibiotics. The technical advisory response units are the ones that fly with these push packs. They are assigned to official duty and are on a 90-minute recall time, which means they cannot go more than 90 minutes away from CDC. Their job is to make sure that when the plane lands that all that material is delivered where it needs to be delivered and handed out safely to the state and local teams. Another part of the stockpile program is the chempack program. The CDC is trying to get 2,300 containers to hospitals, in some cases fire stations, and EMS to respond to potential chemical weapons attack or exposure. CDC has also developed a special lab: the bioterrorism Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Lab. For example, all of the anthrax samples were sent to that lab for testing.
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