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California unprepared for bioterrorism -report
02 Jun 2004 20:08:00 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO, June 2 (Reuters) - California is not prepared for a major public health crisis such as an attack with biological agents, and in some instances planning for bioterrorism is setting back other public health efforts, according to a report released on Wednesday.

California's public health agencies have made progress planning for emergencies such as an outbreak of smallpox, but are poorly coordinated and "not uniformly capable of taking care of infectious disease outbreaks," according to the report by private think-tank, the RAND Corp.

The report said that the most populous U.S. state would respond to a serious outbreak of an infectious disease or biological attack in a haphazard fashion.

"I suspect California is indicative of the rest of country, particularly in terms of unevenness," said RAND researcher Nicole Lurie. "If this happened in a lot of places at once, the state has limited resources to respond.... Certainly in the beginning of this, people are on their own."

"California was thought to be ahead of the pack, but when you look under the covers, you find a lot of variation," Lurie added. "There is room for improvement across the board."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02438659.htm