# 1193
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, has been blogging for about 3 months now. This has been an interesting, and refreshing, look inside the beltway on topics relating to public health.
I'm very pleased that Secretary Leavitt has elected to share his thoughts via a blog, and equally impressed that he does it so well. This is a level of openness we are unaccustomed to seeing from cabinet level officials.
Today Secretary Leavitt gives his thoughts on the Strategic National Stockpile. While there are no bombshells, it is a good overview of the problems involved in maintaining an emergency reserve of medicines.
The main page for the Secretary's blog is HERE. Additionally, Secretary Leavitt blogged in the 2007 Pandemic Leadership blog, along with a handful of other bloggers, and those may be viewed HERE.
Strategic National Stockpiles have had my focus the last few weeks. Each year Congress appropriates money (just under $600 million last year) so we can maintain stockpiles of medical supplies that would be needed in a national emergency. We have organized the system with the objective of being able to deliver basic supplies to the scene of an emergency within 12 hours.
The stockpile system became a serious undertaking following September 11, 2001. Our level of sophistication continues to increase. The procedures for prioritizing and executing the purchases are improving. We have a ways to go in my view.
It is easy to underestimate the challenge of keeping supplies current and ready to deploy. It involves advanced logistics and it is not inexpensive. In many cases, buying the item is a minor part of the cost. Warehousing has to be paid every year. Another challenge is shelf life. Most medical products have to be constantly monitored for currency and after an appropriate period they are no longer usable.
