Health Department expands plan combating BSE, TSE

The Department of Health and Human Services in late August unveiled a department-wide plan outlining new steps to improve scientific understanding of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. The plan incorporates a comprehensive approach to further strengthen surveillance, increase research resources, and expand existing inspection efforts to prevent BSE and TSE from entering or taking hold in the United States.

The plan outlines four areas of responsibility—surveillance, protection, research, and oversight—within the department. This effort will be coordinated with other government agencies, the private sector, and the international community to contain this outbreak and assist those affected by it.

"We've already taken numerous precautionary steps at the federal and local levels to prevent BSE from occurring in the U.S. food supply, but we must continue to strengthen our understanding of this disease," said Tommy G. Thompson, Health and Human Services secretary. "This plan lays out a course of action to expand our understanding of the underlying science of BSE and its potential for transmission to humans."

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will enhance its current program to identify and investigate possible cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Through cooperative agreements with state and local health departments, the CDC also will enhance and expedite the oversight of illness and deaths from CJD so that any possible vCJD cases will be rapidly detected. The CDC will also increase its technical assistance to state and local health personnel, develop new laboratory capacity to support its investigations, and enhance its current collaborative agreement with the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University.

The Food and Drug Administration will review and expand its import inspection programs to keep potentially infected food products out of the United States, and its animal feed inspection program to prevent the use of mammalian protein in feed for ruminant animals. The FDA will also continually review and upgrade its policies designed to prevent potential exposure to vCJD and other TSE through blood transfusions and tissue transplantation. Additionally, the FDA will broaden its policies, where appropriate, to prevent potential transmission through FDA-regulated products including drugs, medical devices, vaccines and other biological products, cosmetics, food and food additives, and dietary supplements.

3 Research Under the new action plan, the National Institutes of Health will more than double its current spending for research on TSE, including BSE and vCJD, by the end of fiscal year 2002. Goals of the NIH research program include understanding prions, the abnormal proteins that cause TSE; learning how TSE are transmitted between animals of one species and between different species; developing diagnostic tests for animals and people, including an effective vCJD screening test; and designing drug treatments. The NIH plans to double the laboratory facilities available over the next two years and triple the number of investigators involved in this research over the next five years.

In addition to providing effective program support to HHS agencies in these efforts, the department will take any steps necessary to reassure the public with timely, accurate, and thorough information about the potential threats posed by BSE and vCJD and about the actions each agency is taking to protect the public from these threats. The department also will continue to support several advisory committees that review issues related to BSE and vCJD, as well as those related to the safety and adequacy of the national blood supply.