Biosecurity

National Biosurveillance Integration Center Faces Challenges To Biological Attack Readiness

The impact of a biological attack on US soil could be catastrophic, resulting in a massive loss of life, severe economic consequences and chaos. Consequently, our nation’s capacity to detect, respond to and mitigate the consequences of this potential threat must be a top national security priority. However, US biosurveillance capabilities face a number of serious challenges, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit report.

“Although Ebola did not cause many US casualties, the outbreak in West Africa from 2013 through 2015 underscored the importance of developing and maintaining a national biosurveillance capability -- that is, the ability to detect biological events of national significance with the aim of providing early warning and better information to guide public health and other types of emergency response,” GAO stated.

“Further,” GAO added, “because the data needed to detect an emerging infectious disease or bioterrorism threat may come from a variety of sources, the ability to share and analyze data from multiple sources may help officials better collaborate to analyze data and quickly recognize the nature of a disease event and its scope.”