While the federal government has devoted “billions in taxpayer dollars” to prepare the US for the possibility of a bioterrorist attack, the nation’s emergency and trauma care systems remain unprepared for the possibility of a terrorist attack using explosives or a biological threat such as SARS or avian flu, Arthur Kellerman, professor and chair of emergency medicine at the… Emory University School of Medicine, writes in a Washington Post opinion piece. According to Kellerman, “International terrorism’s weapon of choice is explosives,” yet there is “not one [federally funded public health preparedness center] focused on civilian injuries from explosives,” compared with 17 such centers for the “less-likely threat” of “biological and other exotic weapons of mass destruction.” He adds that “underfunded emergency rooms and trauma centers” across the U.S. “lack sufficient beds to meet their daily mission, much less absorb large numbers of victims from a terrorist attack,” yet the federal government has earmarked only $3.5 million to trauma systems planning, Kellerman writes.

He notes that the U.S. remains equally unprepared for biological threats such as SARS and influenza. Despite experts’ warnings that a flu pandemic could emerge soon, a national plan for countering such a threat is still in the “draft stage,” and federal officials are not planning a meeting to discuss “surge capacity” at hospitals before next fall, even though evidence shows that hospitals already are diverting ambulances because of overcrowding, Kellerman writes. Moreover, the U.S. “still lacks sufficient production to meet its needs” a “year after the flu vaccine debacle,” and many “[f]ront-line” emergency medical providers are unable to obtain needed protection, he writes. Kellerman concludes, “Unless we quickly rethink our priorities and broadly allocate resources to meet the most plausible threats to the U.S. population, our only option will be a ‘faith-based initiative'” — “[p]ray that nothing happens” (Kellerman, Washington Post, 8/5).