Global health workers, police can't handle bioterror.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe
• Position: SECURITY BEAT: Homeland Defense Brief

The world community is trying to prepare for a bioterrorism event, but planning for one is posing a major challenge to law enforcement and health professionals. Identifying a deliberate outbreak and catching those responsible will take organization and money that currently falls short, experts admitted.

While the United Nations has agencies which have the primary responsibility for monitoring and verifying a chemical or nuclear attack, there is no similar global organization to deal with a biological attack, said Ottorino Cosivi, head of the WHO's preparedness for deliberate epidemics project.

Bioterrorism events would have a global impact, "do not respect national boundaries," and require a worldwide response, Cosivi told the International Conference of Biosafety and Biorisks in March.

It is up to the World Health Organization to provide surveillance, assist nations' efforts to strengthen their health systems to identify deliberate outbreaks and issue guidelines to keep technical information compatible during a crisis. Naturally occurring outbreaks, however, are not part of the WHO mandate, as specified by the World Health Assembly. That makes identifying the source of an outbreak important, in terms of law enforcement and medical response.

The WHO relies on the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) to identify and verify potential outbreaks. GPHIN continuously monitors more than 10,000 sources of information worldwide, chiefly from media accounts, looking for...