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January 29, 2003

U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Health Data Monitored for Bioterror Warning"

New York Times (www.nytimes.com) (01/27/03); Broad, William J.; Miller, Judith

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is leading an effort to use a computerized network to collect and analyze health data of people in eight major cities.  The agency will track doctor reports, emergency rooms visits, and flu medication sales to help the government identify quickly and efficiently disease outbreaks possibly caused by bioterrorism.  Recent advances in commercial medical databases have made the effort possible. The need for such a system is heightened by the potential for war with Iraq and the risk of counterstrikes by terrorists sympathetic to the Iraqi cause.  In an effort to combat claims of abridging patient privacy, the private sector has taken over the project from the military.  Surveillance network advocates assert that patient names and identifiers are not used in the system, but only health data.  Another advantage of the bioterrorism surveillance is that doctors will be better able to track natural disease outbreaks.  A limitation to the project is that doctors do not always fulfill their duty to report certain diseases to health authorities.

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