Va. Is Ready For Most Health Emergencies, Report Says

Another troubling sign, he said, was the number of states that hadn't achieved a top grade for their plans to distribute vaccines and supplies from the federal government's Strategic National Stockpile. Only 15 states, including Virginia, are at the highest level, according to the report, which uses data from the CDC. Neither Maryland nor the District scored at that level.

"Most states . . . are still not able to deliver medications or medical supplies in a rapid enough way to respond to an emergency," Levi said.

Pane, the D.C. health director, said the District had obtained the CDC's highest rating -- "green" -- but subsequently lost it because it didn't keep up with some of the requirements.

"We have the capability and the experience" to distribute medication during an emergency, he said.

As for the vaccination rate, he noted that the District had inoculated nearly all schoolchildren. The elderly "can be an under-served and hard-to-reach population," he said.

Virginia got passing grades on eight of the 10 indicators in the study; the District had five; and Maryland had four, ranking it at the bottom with California, Iowa and New Jersey. The indicators also measured whether states and the District had enough nurses and lab capacity and were maintaining levels of public health spending.

Three years ago, Maryland was ranked among the best prepared states by the Trust for America's Health, which at that time focused more on readiness to confront a bioterrorism attack. Maryland got a lower score this time, in part because of its vaccination rates and nursing shortage.

The report's authors said they compared the District to a state because that's the way U.S. health authorities treat it for grants and for rating its preparedness to distribute emergency medicine.

Lisa Kaplowitz, a top official in Virginia's Health Department, said the state government is working on the two indicators that Virginia missed: having enough nurses and hospital beds for a crisis.

"I certainly don't want people to think we have resolved all the issues . . . but we're much, much better off than we were in 2002 and 2003," she said.

Note: The report is online athttp://healthyamericans.org