Читать книгу National Biodefense Strategy - White House - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Naturally Occurring Biological Threats. Infectious disease threats do not respect borders. Urbanization, habitat encroachment, and increased and faster travel, coupled with weak health systems, increase the ability of infectious diseases to spread rapidly across the globe. Antimicrobial resistance, novel infectious diseases, and the resurgence and spread of once geographically limited infectious diseases can overwhelm response capacities and make outbreaks harder to control. An infectious disease outbreak—even in the most remote places of the world—could spread rapidly across oceans and continents, directly impacting the U.S. population and its health, security, and prosperity.

Deliberate and Accidental Biological Threats. The use of biological weapons or their proliferation by state or non-state actors presents a significant challenge to our national security, our population, our agriculture, and the environment. Multiple nations have pursued clandestine biological weapons programs and a number of terrorist groups have sought to acquire biological weapons. In many countries around the world, pathogens are stored in laboratories that lack appropriate biosecurity measures where they could be diverted by actors who wish to do harm. Similarly, some laboratories do not have appropriate biocontainment or biosafety protocols, which could lead to an outbreak through a laboratory acquired infection or if a pathogen is accidentally released into the environment. Biological material is ubiquitous and can self-propagate; pathogens are found all over the world—in the environment, animal reservoirs, humans, and laboratories. A natural outbreak can lead quickly to not only a public health crisis, but also a biosecurity vulnerability due to the thousands of clinical samples that are generated during an epidemic, which, if handled without appropriate biosecurity measures, could facilitate the development of a biological weapon.