Study: Health agencies fail to quickly respond to infectious disease reports

A recent study of 74 U.S. local public health agencies found that many failed to respond quickly - if at all - to reports of a potential disease outbreak, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.

The RAND Corp. had researchers pretend to be doctors and call randomly selected agencies to report cases of infectious diseases.

Two-thirds of the contacted departments failed to call back within 30 minutes. Almost 40 percent of the agencies failed to call back at all after receiving at least one call.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that a public health expert respond within 30 minutes to any report of infectious diseases such as smallpox, anthrax or meningitis. That quick turnaround is intended to prevent the spread of a disease occurring naturally or through an act of bioterrorism.

"Local public health agencies are basically the first line of defense in an emergency. The public rightfully expects their health department will be there for them, and the first thing is to pick up the phone and respond to an emergency," said RAND researcher David Dausey, lead author of the study.

"We found that that doesn't happen, or doesn't happen with the frequency and regularity that we would hope," he added.

Calls answered by a live person rather than voicemail were more likely to receive a quick response, Dausey said.