Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 21, 1994 TAG: 9404210206
SECTION: NATIONAL/INT PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which created the plan, hope to stop exotic new germs, and the return of old ones, before they spread.
``I don't want to underestimate the ability of viruses and bacteria to survive ... but I think we will be able to minimize them,'' CDC Director Dr. David Satcher said Wednesday.
``We have become complacent about infectious diseases. We have let our infrastructure deteriorate. And in 1993 we paid a price for that,'' Satcher said.
In one year:
A new cholera strain killed more than 5,000 people in India;
The rodent-borne hantavirus spread through the United States;
E. coli bacteria in hamburger poisoned 500 Westerners;
A water parasite sickened 400,000 Milwaukee residents;
Malaria and a host of other diseases developed resistance to medicine.
The CDC's early warning system ``without question ... could have stopped or reduced the burden of these outbreaks,'' said Dr. Gail Cassell, president of the American Society for Microbiology. ``This is certainly something that is badly needed.''
Infectious diseases are on the rise. New ones evolve from animals, mutate or migrate from other countries. Old ones, such as tuberculosis, are returning because of drug resistance, homelessness and overcrowding.
There's no good system to warn doctors when a disease is about to strike, and authorities say budget cuts are mainly to blame.
Over the last decade, CDC lost 20 percent of its personnel and budget for infectious diseases other than AIDS. Last year, the Pentagon ended most of its research into rare diseases.
State health departments, which are supposed to alert CDC to suspicious illnesses, can't afford to track many known killers. Only 12 monitor food-borne illnesses. Even if they did include exotic, rare diseases in routine surveillance, many doctors lack tests to diagnose them.
CDC hopes its new plan, which will cost between $75 million and $125 million, will reverse the tide.
Among the goals:
Strengthen disease surveillance;
Open centers nationwide to fight new infections and discover tests to diagnose them;
Improve public health laboratories and train rare-disease specialists;
Start a global consortium to warn of disease migration, such as the cholera some California travelers carried home or the malaria brought to North Carolina by immigrants.
CDC won't have to start all this from scratch, said Dr. James Hughes, director of the agency's National Center for Infectious Disease.
The World Health Organization tracks influenza worldwide, particularly in China, where it originates. The United States contributes $20,000 and in return learns what to include in each year's flu vaccine.
Some 170 U.S. hospitals track the powerful bacteria that attack recuperating patients.
A CDC-Navy program trains epidemiologists in Egypt, who last summer discovered that a rare virus called Riff Valley fever was blinding Egyptians.
Simply expanding these kinds of partnerships will go a long way toward implementing CDC's plan, Hughes said.
CDC hopes this year to open one surveillance network and two new-pathogen research centers. A new education program will teach Americans to stop demanding antibiotics for colds, which only causes drug-resistant germs, and will push better food sanitation. Next week, Hughes heads to Geneva to discuss global partnerships.
But the agency will need more funding for the program. Satcher is trying to raise money from private organizations, but hopes Congress will contribute despite the budget crunch - because preventing disease is much cheaper than treating it. He takes his plea to the House Appropriations Committee next week.
``We pay a price when we don't maintain the systems of prevention,'' he said.
by CNB