News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – President Bush tomorrow will announce a plan to begin vaccinating military personnel and front-line healthcare workers against smallpox early next year and to offer the vaccine to the public in 2004, according to reports from major news organizations today.

(CIDRAP News) – In passing a bill to create a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week, Congress left the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in charge of most bioterrorism preparedness and civilian biodefense research programs—to the relief of medical research and public health groups.

(CIDRAP News) – Now that the federal government has some licensed smallpox vaccine in its stockpile, a presidential announcement on vaccination recommendations may be coming very soon, bioterrorism expert Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, predicted last week.

"I believe that in the next days you'll be hearing from the president about this vaccine," Osterholm told healthcare workers at a meeting in Minneapolis.

(CIDRAP News) – The House of Representatives' version of a bill to set up a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would keep the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in control of public health programs for dealing with bioterrorism, according to an official of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).

(CIDRAP News) – President Bush's National Strategy for Homeland Security, released this week, lays out a lengthy agenda for defending the country against bioterrorism as well as other kinds of terrorist attacks.

July 9, 2002 (CIDRAP News) - Several national public health organizations are urging Congress and the Bush administration not to shift federal bioterrorism preparedness programs from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the proposed Department of Homeland Security.

(CIDRAP News) – Confirming earlier unofficial reports, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson today named infectious disease expert Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, as the new permanent director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She becomes the first woman to lead the agency.

(CIDRAP News) – President Bush's proposal to consolidate homeland security programs in a new Cabinet department apparently would take sizable bioterrorism-related programs away from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).