No single federal agency has the authority to direct disease surveillance across the government, and coordination among the agencies that do it depends heavily on informal arrangements and personal relationships, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last week.
The report concludes that this fragmentation limits how quickly the United States can detect emerging infectious disease threats. It arrives as the country manages a record measles year, a large multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak, and continued H5N1 avian influenza activity in animals.
