10 Year Anniversary Of Anthrax Attacks In October, TFAH Statement

September 30, 2011
by Petra Rattue
Medical News Today

With the 10th anniversary of the anthrax attacks in the United States coming up this October, Jeff Levi, PhD, Executive Director of the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) marked the occasion making the following statement: 

"All of us at the Trust for America's Health want to take this anniversary to remember those we lost and their loved ones and to commemorate the public health community and other responders who worked tirelessly and heroically to respond and protect us. 

Public health officials were at the lead of the anthrax response - diagnosing and treating victims and running more than a million tests on 125,000 potentially life-threatening samples around the country in a short period of time. These officials were often working without adequate resources or training to respond to these types of attacks and had limited knowledge of the science involved in weaponized anthrax and how widely it was dispersed through the U.S. mail system. This was truly the first time public health came to be viewed as central to emergency response and national security on a wide-scale basis. 

Over the past decade, we made a lot of strategic, smart investments to improve preparedness in the United States. However, recent federal, state and local budget cuts threaten to put that progress into jeopardy. The most important way we can honor the past is to make sure we sustain enough resources to support the field of public health so they have the tools and expertise they need to do their jobs -- so we can prevent what we can and respond when we have to."

 

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