"Microbial Threats to health: emergence, detection,
and response", published this week by the Institute of Medicine focuses
on the need for renewed commitment faced with the increased impact of infectious
diseases in the United States since publication of the landmark report, "Emerging
Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States" in 1992.
The report's authors, the Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health
in the 21st century, recommend enhanced global capacity for response to infectious
diseases and stresses the importance of a robust public health system in responding
to any disease outbreak.
The report recommends that the US should seek to enhance the global capacity
for response to infectious disease threats, focusing in particular on threats
in the developing world (1). It also calls for the US to take a leadership
role in promoting the implementation of a comprehensive system of surveillance
for global infectious diseases that builds on the current global capacity
of infectious disease monitoring, and recommends that there should be responsibility
for the national vaccine strategy at the highest level of government.
Thirteen principal factors in the emergence of microbial threats are listed
in the report, along with details of the existing measures for dealing with
them. The report's recommendations also include enhancing infectious disease
reporting by medical healthcare and veterinary healthcare providers, and
automatic electronic laboratory reporting of notifiable infectious diseases
from all relevant major clinical laboratories to their respective state
health departments as part of a national electronic infectious disease reporting
system.
To avert an imminent crisis resulting from microbial
agents' increasing resistance to available antimicrobial drugs, the committee
recommends procedures to alert infectious disease control stakeholders to
the problem, and more finely targeted use of antimicrobials. The new report
is available at:
http://www.iom.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/Pages/Recently+Released+Reports.