Utah joins 9 states to create bioterror response plan

OMAHA, Neb. — Nebraska will take the lead in developing the first-ever multistate bioterrorism response plan, Gov. Mike Johanns announced Wednesday.

Johanns has been working with Utah and eight other states in the region on a plan that he said would more likely come in handy to deal with common public health issues such as flu or West Nile virus.

"We believe this concept can become a model for the nation," Johanns said at a meeting on bioterrorism collaboration attended by representatives from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.

The other states in the envisioned alliance would be North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Montana.

At the height of the West Nile virus season last year, Nebraska received 1,000 blood samples a day but was only able to test 500, said the state's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Raymond. If an agreement had been in place to share other states' labs, the testing could have been done quicker, he said.

It appears to be a popular concept.

All 10 of the states have embraced the general framework and now Nebraska will take the lead by hiring a person to work on developing a model plan, Johanns said.

The state was asked by the federal Centers for Disease Control to work on establishing a multistate plan during a visit to Nebraska last year, Raymond said.

Charles Schable, director of the Office of Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response in the CDC, said he has been impressed with emergency preparedness work already done in the state, including establishing a health alert network.

Work on the plan will be done using federal funds. If progress can be made in the next year or so, Raymond said he thinks private funding will be provided to help.

Johanns said there is no timeline for completion of the plan, but he wants to get it done before his term as governor ends in 2007.

The goal is to develop protocols and model laws that can be adopted nationally, Raymond said.

Key parts of any agreement would include sharing qualified workers, laboratory space, communications ability and epidemiological capacity.

Potential problems include how to pay for it, liability, how resources would be deployed and how priorities would be determined.

"I have no doubt we do not know all the barriers," said Dr. Steven Hinrichs, director of the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory at UNMC.

One issue will be how to share databases of information, such as where ambulance drivers live and what languages they can speak, Hinrichs said.

Johanns approved $200,000 of Nebraska's bioterrorism funding to work on the initiative, with the University of Nebraska Medical Center contributing another $50,000.

Total cost of the project was not known.

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