Text 1854, 180 rader
Skriven 2005-12-10 23:33:28 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0512102) for Sat, 2005 Dec 10
====================================================
===========================================================================
Press Gaggle After Avian Flu Tabletop Exercise with Homeland Security
Advisor Fran Townsend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael
Leavitt, and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff
===========================================================================

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 10, 2005

Press Gaggle After Avian Flu Tabletop Exercise with Homeland Security
Advisor Fran Townsend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael
Leavitt, and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff
The Stakeout



12:45 P.M. EST

MS. TOWNSEND: Good afternoon, everyone. As you know, the Cabinet, this
morning -- members of the Cabinet conducted an exercise related to the
nation's preparedness to deal with a pandemic flu event. The President has
made perfectly clear that our number-one priority, in the event of a
pandemic, is to save lives. The President has a plan to do just that. He's
released his national strategy for safeguarding against a pandemic flu.
That plan includes a $7.1 billion request for emergency funding from
Congress.

What we've learned today, as we -- as the President has said, is the most
important part of that strategy will be vaccines and antivirals, and that
is the bulk of what that funding is for. We urge Congress to fully fund the
President's strategy to be implemented.

I should be clear that we currently have no evidence that a pandemic flu in
this country is imminent. That said, we are fairly warned, and the time to
prepare for that pandemic is now. That involves all levels of government:
federal, state and local, non-governmental organizations, the private
sector, the media. We all must be prepared and we all have a role to play
in the nation's preparation.

Secretary Leavitt, this week, hosted a conference of state public health
officials, and he'll be traveling to each of the 50 states to meet with
public health officials and discuss preparedness. Secretary Rice, at the
State Department, is spearheading the international partnership to ensure
that we are fully knitted up at all levels of government and
internationally, as well as private and individual citizens.

The key for individuals is education. And I'd like to talk about that for a
moment. This is the time to go -- if you haven't gotten your annual flu
shot, you might think about doing that this year. That's part of your
individual preparedness plan. You want to educate yourself by going to the
website, pandemicflu.gov.

We each have a role to play. I'm a mother -- I've got two small boys -- and
you can be sure I take this seriously, as I'm sure all Americans do. You
have a responsibility to make sure that you are informed so you can best
prepare your family.

Now, we can take a couple of questions, and I have the secretaries here to
help.

Q Fran, can you talk about exactly what happened today and how -- what you
guys went through -- the drill you went through showed some of the problems
that still remain?

MS. TOWNSEND: Let me say this, we're not going to go into the specifics of
it. You know, the exercises are just that. It's a drill, it's meant to test
-- it's meant to push federal resources to the breaking point and to ensure
that we're prepared, that we identify gaps and then we plan to fill them.
We accomplished that this morning.

Q How many gaps did you find?

Q -- what worked and what didn't?

MS. TOWNSEND: What you do is you walk through a fact set and you identify
options, and then what you want to do is go back and make sure that -- do
each of the federal agencies have plans to fill those gaps? And quite
frankly, I think we did quite well. But the thing that we take away from
it, more than anything, is the role that state and local governments would
play. This is not going to be a federal answer to the problem. Federal
government has got a support role to play, but frankly, I think, really,
very important, is the state and local efforts that Secretary Leavitt is
spearheading.

Q But were they involved in this at all, state and local officials?

MS. TOWNSEND: This is an opportunity to test the federal preparedness and
understand what the connection is for our support with state and local
government.

Q -- federal preparedness -- there was a congressional report that came out
Friday that said the government was not prepared -- did not, on the medical
side of things, set up field hospitals, and basically, the whole medical
front. There were a lot of issues. And it was bungled, is what some people
referred to it as. What's your response to that whole -- that whole
accusation by this report that came out Friday?

MS. TOWNSEND: There's been a great deal of planning for preparedness in
just that area. I've not seen the report, so I wouldn't comment on it
specifically.

Q Could we hear from the two secretaries on how you thought things went
today?

SECRETARY LEAVITT: This was a valuable exercise. I will tell you that maybe
even of greater value was what happened in the last week-and-a-half as we
prepared for it. It has moved us thinking deeper in preparing.

What became evident was the need for a comprehensive plan. We need to have
a surveillance plan that allows us to identify when an incident has
occurred in the world. The sooner we know, the more quickly and more
adequately we can respond. We need to have a domestic surveillance system;
when it happens in the United States, having the capacity to know what's
occurring within the health care system is of vital importance. Antivirals
-- we talked at length about how we would deal with the fact that we don't
have an unlimited supply. Vaccines -- a very important part, something that
we'll have a limited constraint of for a few years, but more importantly,
we have -- we lack the capacity in this country to manufacture the number
of courses needed to give everyone a vaccine. That's why the President has
proposed this $7.1 billion plan to revitalize that industry.

But as was previously stated, state and local governments, state and local
communities, schools need to have a plan, businesses need to have a plan,
faith organizations need to have a plan, local officials need to
understand. The public health community understands a pandemic; they
understand the dangers of a pandemic. It's now time to engage a broader
community so that we have a true nationwide response effort that's not only
planned, but exercised and ready.

Q Why was the President not involved in this today?

MS. TOWNSEND: I think it's -- the President knows pretty clearly what his
role is, and what this exercise was about was testing federal roles and the
interagency coordination.

Thank you.

Q Secretary Chertoff, did you want to say something?

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: I was just going to add the fact that this is really
about planning and putting capabilities in place. This is not something
that we're saying is around the corner tomorrow, but it is something we
have an opportunity to get ahead of. And if everybody at all levels of
government takes the opportunity, we will put ourselves in a position to be
ready if and when we have some kind of an outbreak.

Thanks a lot.

Q Is communication the biggest gap between the federal and state officials?

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: One more.

Q Given that you're going on the road next week.

SECRETARY LEAVITT: This is a time for us to be informing but not inflaming.
It's a time for us to inspire preparation but not panic. We have time to
become the first generation, literally, in the history of man to do
something to be prepared for a pandemic. Pandemics happen. They've happened
in the past, they'll happen in the future. This is about being ready for
what inevitably will come. We're quite concerned now about this H5N1 virus
as scientists suggest that it could, in fact, mutate into a virus of major
concern. So we need to be ready.

Thank you.

Q Surveillance -- you mentioned the need for surveillance. Is that in the
works or --

SECRETARY LEAVITT: It's actually expanding rapidly.

MS. TOWNSEND: Thank you.

END 12:53 P.M. EST

===========================================================================
Return to this article at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051210-2.html

 * Origin: (1:3634/12)