NYSACRA

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced that the Department 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.

"Continuing to improve our public health system and the capacity of our
hospitals and major health providers is crucial at this time in our nation's
history," Secretary Thompson said.  "We must build o­n the outstanding
progress made in the past year and continue working with our state and local
partners to enhance our readiness and our ability to respond to public
health emergencies. Our combined efforts will result in a stronger system to
care for Americans in emergencies, whether it be a bioterror attack or an
infectious disease outbreak like SARS or West Nile virus."

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.

Amounts for each state are shown in the chart at
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2003pres/20030902.html

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