HHS asks for more money to fight bioterrorism threat

Congress should appropriate approximately $1 billion to help deal with the threat of bioterrorism, Senate authorizers and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson told the Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday.

"We are prepared to respond" to a bioterrorist attack, Thompson told the subcommittee. "But there is more we can do--and must do--to strengthen our response."

Thompson said he could not give a specific funding number until later in the week because the Office of Management and Budget is still reviewing the department's request. But when Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., asked how much the department needed immediately, Thompson responded "around $800 million."

Thompson also praised a funding priority list presented to the subcommittee by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Public Health Subcommittee ranking member Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who last year got authorizing legislation signed into law to address the need to prepare for acts of bioterrorism.

Kennedy and Frist are proposing to add $1.4 billion to the roughly $400 million currently being spent to counter bioterrorism.

"We are vulnerable," Frist said, "not because we are unprepared, but because we are underprepared."

Frist and Kennedy would devote the bulk of their proposed funding--$635 million--to improving the ability of state and local public health agencies to detect and respond to bioterrorist incidents.

"Our first line of defense is to improve the public health system," Kennedy said.

Thompson agreed. "Without question," Thompson said, public health "is our greatest need."

Kennedy, Frist, and Thompson also called for more funding for Food and Drug Administration food inspectors, noting that many potential biohazards can be spread by food. Thompson said the FDA currently has 750 inspectors with responsibility for 55,000 different sites.