Over the past few weeks, while Republicans and Democrats whooped it up at their respective party conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, my evening television screen was full of promising words about safeguarding healthcare for all Americans.
My days during the convention weeks also were filled with thoughts of healthcare but with a focus on infectious disease, the subject of this month’s Disease Management section. The coincidental timing of these two events got me thinking about just whose job it is to advocate for public health policy. Of course, two big supporters would be the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, but my guess is that neither has full-time lobbyist on the Hill.
Politicians like to talk about insurance coverage, but aside from the problem of not being able to afford healthcare is the problem of not understanding how to fix a healthcare problem. If you’re a three-year-old with E. coli or a 65-year-old with West Nile Fever, staying alive, not health insurance, is your biggest concern. Naturally, these thoughts led to an Internet search.
California, always on the cutting edge, is dealing with a public health funding crisis. Public health physicians there recently requested $9.5 million to beef up the state’s epidemiological reporting system, but the money was line-item vetoed from the state budget by the Gov. Gray Davis. Apparently, there is insufficient funding to support the staff and technology to detect dangerous pathogens quickly and accurately. Of late, when Californians find themselves stricken with nasty bugs, they have had to rely on public health officials from other states to unravel the mystery.
For example, it was Washington public health officials who sleuthed out that California’s Odwalla apple juice was infected with E. coli. Next it was Texas scientists who came to the rescue with the lead on a deadly and mysterious new virus that killed several Californians. A new bill with bipartisan support for the public health money may make it to the governor’s desk, but according to a San Francisco Chronicle article, SB 269 is “languishing” in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, chaired by Assemblywoman Carole Migden of San Francisco. (Side note to California readers: If Migden happens to be your representative, why not send her an e-mail at [email protected] and let her know your views. For traditionalists her capitol phone number is: 919-319-2013.)
It’s not just California. In Chicago, a three-year-old girl died and 56 people got sick eating E. coli-infected watermelon at a Sizzler restaurant. Here in Rhode Island, the night skies over Warwick are punctuated with the whirring blades of helicopters spraying to kill mosquitoes. After finding a dead crow infected with West Nile Virus, state officials are spraying and praying — spraying to kill mosquitoes and praying for no human infections and an end to this rainy August.
How does your state compare to others with regard to public health responsiveness and support? Do you think its doing a good job? If you have an opinion, I’d like to hear it. E-mail me at [email protected].
In fact, e-mail me whether you have an opinion on this one or not. I’d like to collect e-mail addresses from CLP readers to do mini surveys on other issues. Naturally, the results of those informal polls would be reported right here. I’m looking forward to a full electronic mailbox, but please, no viruses.
Coleen Curran
Editor
