News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials today released a progress report on the work of President Barack Obama's Food Safety Working Group, which has been buoyed by legislation passed earlier this year but faces challenges in implementing the law.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) today said drug shortages tripled over the past decade while in related news the Obama administration announced steps to address the problem.

Marcia Crosse, PhD, the GAO's director of healthcare, presented a GAO report today during testimony on prescription drug shortages before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).

(CIDRAP News) – Though much of the nation's ability to detect potentially catastrophic disease outbreaks, manmade or otherwise, is in the hands of state and local agencies, the federal government still lacks a comprehensive view of the role it plays in biosurveillance, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has continued to modify its bioterror countermeasure priorities based on current risk assessments, but it hasn't updated formal plans or fleshed out budget priorities, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – If someone tried to kill Americans with Bacillus anthracis spores today, the nation would have a better medical tool chest for treating the sick and those potentially exposed than it had 10 years ago, when the anthrax letter attacks killed five people, but anthrax defenses are still a work in progress.

(CIDRAP News) – The US government needs to collect much more data on antibiotic use in food animals and resistant bacteria in animals and retail meat to clarify the possible links between them, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released this week.

(CIDRAP News) – Although no successful attacks on the US agriculture and food system have been reported in the past decade, the nation's efforts to defend the system came in for a barrage of criticism yesterday about a lack of coordination and various other shortcomings.

(CIDRAP News) – A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) offers yet another review of lessons from the federal government's response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic while detailing how the government spent, and is still spending, $6.15 billion that was appropriated for the response.