U.S. strategy to combat bioterrorism takes global view.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Chem-Bio

The Defense Department has embarked on a multi-hundrcd-million dollar effort to protect troops from bioterrorism. Its strategy focuses on containing potential outbreaks in areas of the world where pathogens are known to exist.

"What we're trying to do is build lines of defense between the terrorists who have made it very clear that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction--and who have made it very clear that they'll use them on the American people--and the pathogens," said Ken Myers, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The task is not new for the agency, which is responsible for dispatching teams under the auspices of the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program to dismantle post-Cold War nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union. But one of the newer thrusts, the cooperative biological engagement program, is rapidly growing its reach, said Myers.

"It's because we're learning a lot more about potential threats in continents and areas other than the former Soviet Union," he told National Defense.

In regions including Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, teams are discovering that local health clinics possess deadly pathogens not necessarily as potential weapons, but because they need to have samples of naturally-occurring diseases on hand to diagnose outbreaks in their human and animal populations.

The problem though is that the samples are often kept in public repositories where the microbes easily could be swiped and released, intentionally or accidentally.

"We're looking for partners in new areas around the world who have legitimate need for maintaining samples of these horrible diseases and pathogens," said Myers. "We are looking for ways to partner with them to increase their ability to keep them secure and safe, to be able to account for them so they know exactly how many strains of pathogen X or pathogen Y or pathogen Z they might have."

In some of these locations, the effort is not so much about building million-dollar laboratories but rather establishing safety protocols in existing infrastructure. Providing relatively inexpensive security measures, such as locks and bars on windows, or installing computer tracking systems, such as barcodes and scanners, can help clinics safeguard and monitor their specimens.

"We're talking about providing capability which the host country can sustain, maintain and...