 MILNET Brief BioDefense, 3/25/2005 |
| MILNET Brief BioDefense, 3/25/2005 |
"Department of Health and Human Services
HHS would allocate $130 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support investments in human health surveillance. CDC will use these funds to improve linkages between public health laboratories, and border health and quarantine stations
- CDC will augment its current efforts by using automated analysis techniques on electronically available health-related data. In addition, public health, clinical, and private sector commercial laboratory capabilities will be expanded to provide timely and accurate diagnoses across the country." 1
The Presidential Directive HSPD-10 2 also spells out several others programs:
In Biodefense Directive, the President indicated that the Biodefense actions taken so far (as of April 28, 2004, the date of the directive):"Enhancing Biodefense
An additional $2.5 billion for Project BioShield will be available starting in FY 2005 for the development and pre-purchase of necessary medical countermeasures against weapons of mass destruction, and improved bio-surveillance by expanding air monitoring for biological agents in high-threat cities and high-value targets such as stadiums and transit systems. Specifically, the FY 2005 appropriation funds the following initiatives:
- Project BioShield allows the Federal Government to pre-purchase critically needed vaccines and medications for biodefense as soon as experts agree that they are safe and effective enough to be added to the Strategic National Stockpile. The program seeks to encourage the development of necessary medical countermeasures against a biological, radiological, or nuclear attack. Starting in 2005, $2.5 billion will be available for BioShield.
- Improving Biosurveillance, within DHS, will involve the Science and Technology (S&T) and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) directorates.
- In S&T, the act provides a total of $118 million to enhance current environmental monitoring activities. A key component of this initiative will be an expansion and deployment of the next generation of technologies related to the BioWatch Program, a bio-surveillance warning system.
- In IAIP, $11 million is appropriated to integrate, in real-time, bio-surveillance data collected from sensors throughout the country and fuse this data with information from health and agricultural surveillance and other terrorist-threat information from the law enforcement and intelligence communities.
- National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Federal medical response to major emergencies and federally declared disasters. For 2005, the act includes $20 million in FEMA for planning and exercises associated with medical surge capabilities"
MILNET has created a table to summarize the current biodefeense policies under the four major focuses:"The United States has pursued aggressively a broad range of programs and capabilities to confront the biological weapons threat. These actions, taken together, represent an extraordinary level of effort by any measure. Among our significant accomplishments, we have:
Building on these accomplishments, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation of our biological defense capabilities to identify future priorities and actions to support them. The results of that study provide a blueprint for our future biodefense program, Biodefense for the 21st Century, that fully integrates the sustained efforts of the national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement communities."
- Expanded international efforts to keep dangerous biological materials out of the hands of terrorists;
- Launched the Proliferation Security Initiative to stem the trafficking in weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including biological weapons;
- Established the BioWatch program, a network of environmental sensors to detect biological weapons attacks against major cities in the United States;
- Initiated new programs to secure and defend our agriculture and food systems against biological contamination;
- Increased funding for bioterrorism research within the Department of Health and Human Services by thirty-fold;
- Expanded the Strategic National Stockpile of medicines for treating victims of bioterror attacks, ensuring that the stockpile.s .push packages. can be anywhere in the United States within 12 hours;
- Stockpiled enough smallpox vaccine for every American, and vaccinated over 450,000 members of the armed services;
- Launched and funded Project BioShield to speed the development and acquisition of new medical countermeasures against biological weapons;
- Provided Federal funds to improve the capacities of state and local health systems to detect, diagnose, prevent, and respond to biological weapons attacks; and
- Worked with the international community to strengthen global, regional and national programs to prevent, detect, and respond to biological weapons attacks.
| Focus Area |
Program |
Description |
Agency |
| Threat Assessment |
Biological Warfare Related Intelligence | identifying and characterizing biological weapons programs and anticipating biological attacks, improving the Intelligence Community's ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence;continuing to develop more forward-looking analyses, to include Red Teaming efforts, to understand new scientific trends that may be exploited by our adversaries to develop biological weapons and to help position intelligence collectors ahead of the problem. | All |
| Assessments | development of periodic assessments of the evolving biological weapons threat; a continuous, formal process for conducting routine capabilities assessments to guide prioritization of our on-going investments in biodefense-related research, development, planning, and preparedness; a periodic senior-level policy net assessment that evaluates progress in implementing this policy, identifies continuing gaps or vulnerabilities in our biodefense posture, and makes recommendations for re-balancing and refining investments among the pillars of our overall biodefense policy | DHS |
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| Anticipation of Future Threats | to addresse the threat that adversaries may design a pathogen to evade our existing medical and non-medical countermeasures we are building the flexibility and speed to characterize such agents, assess existing defenses, and rapidly develop safe and effective countermeasures; strengthening the ability of our medical, public health, agricultural, defense, law enforcement, diplomatic, environmental, and transportation infrastructures to recognize and confront such threats and to contain their impact. | DHHS |
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| Prevention and Protection | Proactive Prevention | continuation and expansion of current multilateral initiatives to limit the access of agents, technology, and know-how to countries, groups, or individuals seeking to develop, produce, and use biological agents; further enhancing diplomacy, arms control, law enforcement, multilateral export controls, and threat reduction assistance that impede adversaries seeking biological weapons capabilities; expand threat reduction assistance programs aimed at preventing the proliferation of biological weapons expertise; The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, released in December 2002, places special emphasis on the need for proactive steps to confront WMD threats, have improved and will further improve our ability to detect and destroy an adversary's biological weapons assets before they can be used; expanding existing capabilities to interdict enabling technologies and materials; working to improve supporting intelligence capabilities to provide timely and accurate information to support proactive prevention. | DOS, DOD, DOJ, IC |
| Critical Infrastructure Protection | Assessing the vulnerability of this infrastructure, particularly the medical, public health, food, water, energy, agricultural, and transportation sectors; working to improve the survivability and ensure the continuity and restoration of operations of critical infrastructure sectors following biological weapons attacks. | DHS |
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| Surveillance and Detection | Attack Warning | working to develop an integrated and comprehensive attack warning system to rapidly recognize and characterize the dispersal of biological agents in human and animal populations, food, water, agriculture, and the environment; creating a national bioawareness system will permit the recognition of a biological attack at the earliest possible moment and permit initiation of a robust response to prevent unnecessary loss of life, economic losses, and social disruption. Such a system will be built upon and reinforce existing Federal, state, local, and international surveillance systems | DHS |
| Attribution | Deterrence is the historical cornerstone of our defense, and attribution -- the identification of the perpetrator as well as method of attack .- forms the foundation upon which deterrence rests; mproving our capability to perform technical forensic analysis and to assimilate all-source information to enable attribution assessments. We have created and designated the National Bioforensic Analysis Center of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasure Center, under the Department of Homeland Security; to conduct and facilitate the technical forensic analysis and interpretation of materials recovered following a biological attack | DHS |
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| Response and Recovery "Once a biological weapons attack is detected, the speed and coordination of the Federal, state, local, private sector, and international response will be critical in mitigating the lethal, medical, psychological, and economic consequences of such attacks" |
Response Planning | Adding annex to the National Response Plan (NRP). Capabilities required for response and mitigation against biological attacks will be based on interagency-agreed scenarios that are derived from plausible threat assessments. These plans will be regularly tested as part of Federal, state, local, and international exercises. | DHS |
| Mass Casualty Care | Following a biological weapons attack, all necessary means must be rapidly brought to bear to prevent loss
of life, illness, psychological trauma, and to contain the spread of potentially contagious diseases.; strengthen plans to
swiftly distribute needed medical countermeasures; working to expand and, where needed,
create new Federal, state, and local medical and public health capabilities for all-hazard mass casualty
care; |
DHS DHHS DOD DVA |
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| Risk Communication | Timely communications with the general public and the medical and public health communities can significantly influence the success of response efforts, including health- and life-sustaining interventions; develop communication strategies, plans, products, and channels to reach all segments of our society, including those with physical or language limitations; developing comprehensive coordinated risk communication strategies to facilitate emergency preparedness for biological weapons attacks; includes travel and citizen advisories, international coordination and communication, and response and recovery communications in the event of a large-scale biological attack | DHS |
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| Medical Countermeasure Development | Development and deployment of safe, effective medical countermeasures against biological weapons agents of concern; an aggressive research program to develop better medical countermeasures; reflect the potential for novel or genetically engineered biological weapons agents and possible scenarios that require providing broad-spectrum coverage against a range of possible biological threats to prevent illness even after exposure; begun construction of new labs; assure the nation has the infrastructure required to test and evaluate existing, proposed, or promising countermeasures, assess their safety and effectiveness, expedite their development, and ensure rapid licensure. | DHHS |
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| Decontamination | working to improve Federal capabilities to support states and localities in their
efforts to rapidly assess, decontaminate, and return to pre-attack activities, and are developing standards
and protocols for the most effective approaches; |
EPA, DOJ, DOD, DOA, DHHS, DHS | |
"Project BioWatch is a cooperative effort among the Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Laboratory Response Network to provide an early warning system for bio-threats. There are currently over 4000 atmospheric monitoring stations nation-wide for the detection of atmospheric pollutants. Under the auspices of Project BioWatch, atmospheric samples in numerous cities are monitored around-the-clock for select agents. Filters from the sampling apparatus are analyzed by the CDC network for numerous biological threat agents. If any such agents were to be detected, mechanisms and protocols are in place for DHS, CDC, and EPA to reach crucial public health decisions rapidly, and promulgate a uniform course of action for local public health officials on the ‘front lines.’ This network was established very rapidly, and much work remains to take full advantage of it, but it is functioning today."BIOSHIELD
"Project Bioshield is a national security measure to stockpile drugs and treatments against terrorist threats first proposed by President Bush in January, 2003. Five-hundred and sixty days after Bush’s initial proposal, the Project Bioshield Act of 2004 was passed nearly unanimously by Congress and signed by the president on July 21, 2004. Project Bioshield was allocated $5.6 billion over the next 10 years to fund research and the purchase of vaccines, therapeutics and other products (all pharmaceutical) against chemical, biological, and radiological attacks."
"Project BioSense is still in its infancy. It is intended to reduce the lag time between the detection of a possible bio-agent and an appropriate response. Distinct from Project BioWatch, but integrated in function, Project BioSense relies upon multiple streams of information to facilitate rapid decision-making. Monitored parameters will include environmental data from Project BioWatch, epidemiological information from hospitals administered by the Department of Defense and the Veteran’s Administration, reports from pharmacies across the nation, and other sources of relevant syndromic and non-traditional data. All this information will converge at the CDC’s Biointelligence Center, first for analysis, and then, if warranted, for coordinated response. Having this single center examine data from many different sources permits the detection of patterns and anomalies that may not be apparent through other means. Moreover, the CDC has long been entrusted with both gathering information from and disseminating information to front-line health-care providers. This new role is a logical extension of that mission, in which the CDC will work hand-in-glove with clinicians at the local level to determine if an emergency response is warranted, and the necessary magnitude of that action."