Bayh proposes state readiness
bill
By Heather Mangold
City
Editor
Sen. Evan Bayh thinks that Indiana is well prepared
for biological and chemical attacks, said Bayh's press secretary Mark
Kornblau.
Along with his confidence in the state's readiness,
Bayh presented a bill on Wednesday which would boost all states' preparedness
for biological terrorist attacks. If passed, the bill would allocate
$5 million to all 50 states and an additional $200 million to be distributed
according to population in order to execute each state's bioterrorism
plan.
Money provided to each state within the bill would
be spent under the supervision of that state's governor.
"One of the basic principles of his bill is that
it's not prescriptive," said Kornblau. "It's not the federal government
telling each governor how they should act in the event of biological
and chemical attacks."
Kornblau said the bioterrorism bill presented by
Bayh would provide support from federal agencies in terms of important
information that could be helpful in developing bioterrorism plans.
Margaret Joseph, spokesperson for the Indiana state
Department of Health, said the department has been working hard to ensure
that Indiana would be ready in the event of a biological or chemical
attack.
"We've been working on bioterrorism for several
years now," said Joseph. "We've received a lot of money from the Feds
(the Federal Reserve Board)."
Since state health commissioner Greg Wilson took
his position in February 2001, bioterrorism readiness has been a major
focus of the department, said Joseph.
"We have about 10 people right now who spend one-third
to one-half of every day on it," said Joseph.
Currently, the department has grants totaling more
than $450,000 from the federal government to be used to put the Indiana
state plan in place, to remind doctors and hospitals of symptoms of
diseases and to enhance the capability of the state laboratory to test
for diseases such as smallpox and anthrax.
The bill presented to the United States Senate
Health Committee from Bayh and other U.S. senators ensures that all
states have a plan in place to respond to the threat of biological terrorism.
Under the bill, each state would submit a plan to the Secretary of Health
and Human Services detailing their methods of response capabilities
and public health infrastructure. In order for state governors to receive
adequate information regarding biological attacks, the federal government
would be required to share all necessary information with individual
states. Because communication is necessary to carry this out, the bill
would speed up design and kick off of a national communication network
that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been working
on for two years.
According to the center, in the event of a such
an attack, physicians and health care providers would notify federal
authorities of diseases that would most likely be used in a terrorist
attack. Notification to the public would promptly follow.
The department is not recommending that the public
make take any bioterrorism-related precautions. According to the department,
a bioterrorist attack with bacteria or viruses spread in the air would
be extremely unlikely. The department attributed this to the difficulty
for bacteria and viruses to survive in the open air. Terrorists have
tried unsuccessfully to attack with biological agents in the past, according
to the department.
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