Disaster Preparedness

It looks like an anonymous poster beat me to this, but I actually saw this article yesterday concerning Arizona's disaster preparedness.

The "Ready or Not: 2008" report by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation looked at 10 areas of emergency preparedness, including having a stockpile of vaccines, a plan to distribute those vaccines and funding.

According to the report, Arizona was lacking in the following areas:

• Stockpile pf 50 percent or more of its share of federally-subsidized antiviral medications in preparation for a potential pandemic flu.

• An intra-state courier system that operates 24 hours a day for pick up and delivery of specimens.

• Laws that reduce or limit the liability for businesses and nonprofits that serve in a public health emergencies.

• No Medical Reserve Corps coordinator.

• Meeting or exceeding the national average of 44 percent identifying pathogens responsible for foodborne disease outbreaks.

Arizona was dead last.

At one of the Health Care forums that I held during the campaign, I asked a panel of Emergency Room workers and other physicians where they would rate our emergency preparedness in Tuscon. They literally laughed. One summed it up by saying "Remember the measles outbreak?"

Money quote from the article:

Health department officials are still trying to figure out how the patients were exposed.

Dr. Michelle McDonald is with the Pima County Health Department.

Dr. McDonald says, "Most of the outbreaks that have occurred throughout the nation have been contained within maybe one or two generations. We're on the fourth or fifth generation."

Now the focus is on trying to stop the outbreak.

Couple of things: first, we were way behind on containing the outbreak compared to the national average, second the Pima County Health Department seemed to still hold jurisdiction. Where were the state folks? A national news scale outbreak not enough to get them involved?

There is no question that Napolitano spent little time with the logistic understructure of Arizona's medical and preparedness infrastructure. While important, it is simply not sexy enough to make the editorial news cycle. I know, I spent over a year campaigning on the issue and the average voter is barely this side of apathetic on the mundane details, until the system fails them personally.

So again, what is Napolitano's interest in the position? The entire job is wonkish invisible details with little credit or recognition, with the possibility of things going really, really wrong. Oh, and there is that added component of border security that will certainly force her to make hard choices, something that all sides can agree, she has little interest in doing. All of this on top of losing her "darling" local media status.

I don't get it.