roanoke.com Real Politics / Preston Bryant

DEC. 9, 2002

Public health: our bounden duty

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

There is a connection between the health of a nation’s people and its ability to fight and win a war.

When Gov. Lee Trinkle delivered his 1922 inaugural address, he noted that when our boys were heading into WW I, the medical examiners were shocked to find that so many were “unfit for military service.”

Trinkle’s comments that day were couched in a vow to invest more in public health and the prevention of diseases so that our population would be forever healthy – not just so we’d have hearty specimens ready to be called into action, but so we could lead happy and productive lives.

“We now know how most of the serious diseases are carried, and we know how to prevent their transmission,” he said. “It is our bounden duty to utilize this knowledge.”

War and disease prevention is every bit as much with us today. But the nature of the discussion has moved more from offense to defense. We’re less concerned now that we won’t be able to cobble together a readily healthy fighting force than we are about protecting a vulnerable civilian population against Saddam Hussein unleashing the smallpox virus, which could kill 30 percent of an unvaccinated people.

When U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson addressed the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association a couple of weeks ago, he spoke to them specifically about bioterrorist threats. He suggested that one area where the governors could create a lasting legacy is in beefing up their state and local health departments. And – get this – he promised that the federal government would help them with millions of dollars.

Thompson, a former Wisconsin governor, knows that increased state investments these days are easier said than done. But he also knows that public safety – not just cops and prosecutors and prisons, but also health – is government’s No. 1 responsibility.

It’s important, therefore, that the federal government not dangle out there the promise of significant sums of money only if the states can come up with a match from their own funds.

Currently, Virginia gets about $22 million in funds from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and nearly $3 million more from the Health Resources and Services Administration. That’s money that flows from the feds to us, with no required state match.

State health officials seem to believe that there will be considerably more federal money coming to hospitals in the upcoming federal budget as well as more to state governments for public health.

If true, this seems to be in keeping with the Bush Administration’s pending plan – its details will probably be released this week – to prepare for a smallpox attack on these shores.

Early signals are that the Bush plan will call for vaccinations of 500,000 troops and 500,000 public health workers. Virginia now has plans in place to vaccinate more than 12,000 public health workers, private physicians, nurses and others who will be on the frontline in fighting an outbreak.

The feds ultimately want state health departments to lead the way in vaccinating the entire U.S. population within 10 days, should the dreaded need ever occur. That call would come only upon a “confirmed case” of smallpox. In Virginia, it’s estimated that it’d take some 25,000 health workers to vaccinate all 7 million citizens within 10 days. Every public and private health worker would have to lend a hand.

The smallpox vaccinations, however, come with risks. Routine vaccinations were stopped in 1972 – meaning about half the nation’s population today is without protection – and the disease was considered officially eradicated in 1980. So it’s been a while since public health agencies have had to deal with this.

Smallpox is history’s most deadly disease. It killed more than 500 million in the 20th century alone. It’s estimated now that if the entire U.S. population were vaccinated, 200-400 would die from the inoculation itself.

Public safety is government’s number one responsibility. And that especially includes public health.

Trinkle was right: we know how diseases are transmitted – more so today than in 1922 – and we know how to prevent them. It is our “bounden duty” to use this knowledge.

These are dangerous times. And there’s a mad man on the loose. Evidence is mounting, it seems, that Saddam has the smallpox virus. In 1994, United Nations inspectors found at an Iraqi medical complex a freeze-dryer labeled “smallpox” in Arabic. U.S. and other foreign intelligence agencies have found more clues since then that Iraq has it. (By the way, the U.S. and Russia admit to having samples of the virus; North Korea and France are believed to have it, too.)

Who thinks that Saddam couldn’t easily unleash it in our nation’s most populated cities? And let’s not forget: the Pentagon sits on Virginia soil.

When the General Assembly returns to Richmond in January to make something from nothing for its budget, it’ll be imperative that lawmakers exercise their duty to put the public’s safety and health first.

The Virginia Department of Health should be spared no resource for its plans to protect our citizens.

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