The federal government has a range of ongoing efforts aimed at improving the nation’s ability to detect and monitor various biological threats but it lacks a national strategy to better guide its efforts, which would also be aided by designating a single leader who can devote the time, resources and authority to better implement a national biosurveillance capability, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a recent report.
There are seven federal departments and agencies that have primary responsibility for biosurveillance in a number of domains, including public, animal, plant, food and the environment. Each of these is guided to some degree by higher level strategies.
Yet, “While some high-level biodefense strategies have been developed, there is no broad, integrated national strategy that encompasses all stakeholders with biosurveillance responsibilities that can be used to guide the systematic identification of risk, assessment of resources needed to address those risks, and the prioritization and allocation of investment across the entire biosurveillance enterprise,” GAO says in its 144-page report, Biosurveillance: Efforts to Develop a National Biosurveillance Capability Need a National Strategy and a Designated Leader (GAO-10-645). “Further, while numerous agencies have biosurveillance responsibilities, a single focal point for this effort has not been established.”
GAO notes that efforts are underway within the federal government to create a more robust and integrated biosurveillance capability. However, challenges remain, the report says.
Among these are “looming workforce shortages, providing ongoing training rapidly evolving fields, information-sharing impediments among systems developed for various purposes, and constraints on environmental monitoring systems,” GAO says. Workforce shortages exist in the public health and healthcare fields due to the retirement of workers, a lack of trained workers, inadequate funding and uncompetitive salaries and benefits, it says. There are also shortages in the animal health field, GAO says.
The report points to a number of biothreats such as a growing number of infectious diseases that are spreading more quickly, the proliferation of zoonotic diseases and the weaponization of some disease agents. Biosurveillance refers to the collection, analysis and interpretation of data to reduce the time it takes to recognize and characterize biological events and to provide situational awareness.