The United States has faced its greatest national health emergencies in the past five years. What do they show about America’s ability to handle national disasters? What is yet to come?
by Cecil E. Maranville
The blessings the United States enjoys are many, but one of the greatest has been its relative freedom from major disasters. Only twice has the United States declared a federal public health emergency—the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina.
That remarkable record is likely to change. We'll consider how below, but first, let's look at how prepared the country is to deal with major disasters.
The nonprofit organization Trust for America's Health (TFAH) recently released its fourth annual "Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health from Disease, Disasters, and Bioterrorism" (http://healthyamericans.org/reports/bioterror06/BioTerrorReport2006.pdf). TFAH assesses health emergency preparedness of the 50 states using 10 specific indicators. Some of them are:
• Meeting the highest rating of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for preparedness to distribute emergency vaccines, antidotes and medical supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), which the CDC maintains.
• Sufficient laboratory capabilities to test for biological threats.
• Sufficient number of laboratory experts trained to test for a suspected outbreak of anthrax or the plague.
• Enough hospital bed capacity to accommodate the estimated number of people needing hospitalization within the first two weeks of "a moderate pandemic flu outbreak."
• Having a sufficient number of registered nurses.
Highlights from the report
Only one state scored a perfect 10—Oklahoma; Kansas was the only state to score nine; the rest (and Washington D.C.) scored between eight and four.
