Are you concerned that biosurveillance companies are not enough to protect against foreign dieses and bio-terror threats? According to the U.S Department Of Defense (DOD), "The White House has issued the first U.S. National Strategy for Biosurveillance to quickly detect a range of global health and security hazard." The DOD defines Biosurveillance as " gathering, analysis and interpretation of data related to disease activity and threats to human and animal health to achieve early warning, detection and situational awareness".
This isn't a completely new concept, there are hundreds of separate surveillance programs that do the same thing. The federal government has made considerable investments in deploying biosurveillance systems across the country, but it has done so without a clear overarching federal strategy for designing or testing these systems. The DOD states "the strategy calls for a coordinated approach involving federal, state, local and tribal governments; the private sector; nongovernmental organizations; and international partners." Which means that this strategy will now implement all of the other organizations into one government funded plan focusing together on the prevention of hazardous diseases.
“It challenges us ... to take full advantage of the advanced technologies, new vaccines, the latest science, and social media that can help keep our citizens safe..." says the president.
Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs says "monitoring and understanding infectious disease always has been a DOD priority..."
Weber goes on explaining that that many of the DOD researchers have all helped to create vaccines for disease like malaria and dengue fever. He also states “we have a network of three U.S. Army and three U.S. Navy laboratories in places like Cairo, Egypt; Lima, Peru; Nairobi, Kenya; Bangkok, Thailand; and now in Tbilisi, Georgia.” Now this all does sound very promising, an advance watch and alarm system against natural diseases and bio-terror attacks. This program i think will help solve problems like the 2001 anthrax letters, 2003 SARS outbreak, 2009 bird flu pandemic and 2011 nuclear emergency in Japan.
DOD Has Running Start on Biosurveillance Strategy
This isn't a completely new concept, there are hundreds of separate surveillance programs that do the same thing. The federal government has made considerable investments in deploying biosurveillance systems across the country, but it has done so without a clear overarching federal strategy for designing or testing these systems. The DOD states "the strategy calls for a coordinated approach involving federal, state, local and tribal governments; the private sector; nongovernmental organizations; and international partners." Which means that this strategy will now implement all of the other organizations into one government funded plan focusing together on the prevention of hazardous diseases.
“It challenges us ... to take full advantage of the advanced technologies, new vaccines, the latest science, and social media that can help keep our citizens safe..." says the president.
Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs says "monitoring and understanding infectious disease always has been a DOD priority..."
Weber goes on explaining that that many of the DOD researchers have all helped to create vaccines for disease like malaria and dengue fever. He also states “we have a network of three U.S. Army and three U.S. Navy laboratories in places like Cairo, Egypt; Lima, Peru; Nairobi, Kenya; Bangkok, Thailand; and now in Tbilisi, Georgia.” Now this all does sound very promising, an advance watch and alarm system against natural diseases and bio-terror attacks. This program i think will help solve problems like the 2001 anthrax letters, 2003 SARS outbreak, 2009 bird flu pandemic and 2011 nuclear emergency in Japan.
DOD Has Running Start on Biosurveillance Strategy
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