Public health commission needs to meet

We are not prepared for the next public health emergency.

Mexico just reported its first case of bird flu death in a 59-year-old who had no known exposure to poultry or other animals. Within days of the March report of the first confirmed case in the U.S. involving a goat and a highly pathogenic form of avian influenza, more infections rapidly spread across state lines, with dairy workers in Texas and Michigan, and a poultry worker in Colorado testing positive in April for H5N1. While the U.S. cases are of a different subtype than the one detected in the man in Mexico, the fact is, something is circulating that has now caused a death and has begun to spread across the U.S.

Is this the next disease to create another public health emergency? Perhaps yes and perhaps no, but either way, with the nature of the pathogen spreading and now causing death, public health emergency plans should be triggered, especially to closely monitor disease incidence in humans and the animal population of Delaware.

Unfortunately, in Delaware, there is no emergency public health plan. The Legislature made the Public Health Emergency Planning Commission responsible to develop a plan in 2002, yet since the law was signed by the governor, the commission has never met and has never prepared a plan as the law requires. The members of the commission are the heads of all the state agencies, and the secretary of health serves as its chair. Calls to the office of the secretary of Health and Social Services requesting information go unanswered, and no one there seems to have a clue about the commission. This is a dereliction of duty that puts all citizens and the livestock of the state at risk for this round of avian influenza and whatever highly pathogenic disease shows up next.

It is not as if no one reminded the governor and the secretary about the commission, as just last year the Legislature amended the law creating the commission and yet still no action – no clue. Part of that amendment the governor signed required the commission to meet every 30 days after the declaration of an emergency to inform decision making. Recall how much our lives were interrupted during COVID with repeated extensions of the emergency declaration, which has no overview by the Legislature or the courts. To top off this lack of good government, the current Legislature has sat on House Bill 245 that adds legislative overview of emergency declarations after six months. From my perspective as an international public health lawyer who has advised in public health legislation, the 2023 amendment and HB 245 bring Delaware law into alignment with best public practices that are designed to protect citizens. No one should be comfortable with this situation. What can you do? Before the Legislative session ends, contact your representative and senator, and push them to move HB 245 to the floor for vote, and call the governor’s office and demand the commission meet and perform its duty.