The need for a military public health laboratory symposium

The Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Respo nse System has a mission to identify vulnerabilities in the military health system related to the occurrence of emerging infectious diseases, Public h ealth laboratory (PHL) functions are critical to the detection and control of emerging infectious diseases and were assessed. Four important services were evaluated: (1) surveillance for antibiotic resistance, (2) laboratory- based infectious disease surveillance, (3) provision of diagnostic services for uncommon infections, and (4) specimen referral and information transfe r within a defined PHL infrastructure. Initial assessments identified sever al shortcomings and a lack of information about PHL functions. Therefore, a PI-II, symposium was held in September 1999 to define the state of civilia n and military PHL functions, identify problems and interventions, and enco urage civilian-military networking. After the symposium, selected attendees met in two workshop groups. One addressed the first two functions; the oth er addressed the last two.