Hhs Provides $1.4 Billion More To States And Hospitals For Terrorism Preparedness
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made available another $1.4 billion to the states, territories and three metropolitan areas to help strengthen their capacity to respond to terrorism and other public health emergencies.
The money will allow states to continue planning and upgrading the public health system and hospitals/health care entities that will be called upon to respond.
The funds will be used to upgrade infectious disease surveillance and investigation, enhance the readiness of hospitals and the health care system to deal with large numbers of casualties, expand public health laboratory and communications capacities and improve connectivity between hospitals, and city, local and state health departments to enhance disease reporting.
The HHS funding is awarded as two separate but interrelated cooperative agreements. HHS’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is providing $870 million for strengthening public health preparedness to address bioterrorism, outbreaks of infectious diseases and public health emergencies.
The funds are to be used for readiness assessment, surveillance and epidemiology, biological lab capacity, chemical lab capacity, communications technology, health information dissemination, education and training and smallpox preparedness planning.
HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration is providing $498 million for states to develop surge capacity to deal with mass casualty events. This includes the expansion of hospital beds, development of isolation capacity, identifying additional health care personnel, establishing hospital-based pharmaceutical caches, and providing mental health services, trauma and burn care, communications and personal protective equipment. Hospitals play a critical role in both identifying and responding to any potential terrorism attack or infectious disease outbreak.
Overall, HHS is spending $3.5 billion this year for bioterrorism preparedness, including research into potential biological agents that could be used as bioterror weapons as well as potential treatments and vaccines. The fiscal year 2003 funding is up from about $1.8 billion for these activities in 2002.
Last year, HHS provided a total $1.1 billion to the states, territories and three major metropolitan areas for these preparedness activities.
States have indicated that approximately 75 percent of those fiscal year 2002 funds are being provided directly to local governments and hospitals, or on spending to benefit local and hospital infrastructure and support systems.
The funds were made available by HHS in June and July of 2002, with as much as 20 percent of the funding actually released several months earlier. States are still drawing down on these funds as they ramp up their preparedness activities. So far, states have drawn about $563 million of last year’s total.
