White House issues first-ever national biosurveillance strategy

In an article on the U.S. Department of Defense webpage, the American Forces Press Service reports on the first U.S. National Strategy for Biosurveillance, issued by the White House "to quickly detect a range of global health and security hazards." According to the article, "the Defense Department has a running start in implementing the new plan, a senior defense official said," and "many of the activities described in the strategy are ongoing at DOD." "So much of what we're doing is integrating the efforts and working hard on the overlap between global security and global health, in what [President Barack Obama] refers to as global health security," said Andrew Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, the news service writes (Pellerin, 8/22).