Despite Ebola Fears, DHS Unprepared for a Pandemic After Spending a Bundle, Warns Inspector General

Despite years of warning,
planning and spending, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is
unprepared for the sort of pandemic that has been occupying
Americans’ minds of late, DHS Inspector General John Roth told the
House Oversight Committee today. The feds have stockpiled plenty of
gear and supplies, but they don’t know if it’s the right gear, in
the right quantities, or whether it’s in usable condition, because
there’s no game plan to speak of.

In testimony on the government’s response to “the
Ebola crisis,”
Roth described the results of an audit conducted just two months
ago:

During our audit, we found that DHS did not adequately conduct a
needs assessment before purchasing protective equipment and
antiviral drugs. DHS reported spending $9.5 million on pandemic
protective equipment beginning in 2006, yet did not identify its
needs for protective equipment. Moreover, DHS spent $6.7 million
for antiviral drugs, but did not have clear and documented
methodologies for determining the types and quantities of
medication it should purchase. In other words, we could not
determine the basis for DHS’ decisions on how much or what types of
pandemic preparedness supplies to purchase, store, or distribute.
The balance of the funds was spent on pandemic research, exercises,
and storage.

By not identifying its needs, the Department cannot be sure its
protective equipment stockpiles are adequate or determine whether
it has excess supplies on hand.

Roth pointed out that DHS has stockpiled 350,000 white coverall
suits and 16 million surgical masks without actually coming up with
a justification for those numbers. The same is true of the
department’s horde of antiviral drugs—although it actually has
estimates for its needs in this area that it didn’t actually
follow. Too many? Too few? Maybe we’ll find out the hard way.

Oh. And the DHS’s antibiotics have apparently been warehoused
without any thought to how they’re supposed to be stored so that
they remain usable.

Of the DHS’s stockpile of hand sanitizer, 84 percent is
expired—so are 200,000 respirators. The entire respirator
supply is expected to be unusable after next year. So is most of
that antiviral stock.

All of which may be irrelevant, since DHS can’t find the stuff
anyway. “DHS did not readily know how much protective equipment it
had on hand or where the equipment was being stored,” Roth told the
committee.

The full
August 2014 audit is here.