THE KALEIDOSCOPE HAS BEEN SHAKEN, THE HURRICANE HAS STRUCK, PUBLIC SERVICES WILL NEVER AGAIN BE NEGLECTED THE WAY THEY HAVE BEEN—OR WILL THEY?

In this issue, Nancy Milio hits the editorial pages again, this time with a hard-hitting commentary on how the recent hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico have exposed the poor public health infrastructure in the United States. Effective planning, she points out, requires clear goals and a strategy based on defined responsibilities of all major stake holders; mechanisms for decision making, coordination, and communications—and resources; money, people, supplies, expertise. It also requires the use of reliable information, preferably science based.

How many countries today can claim that they have robust public health systems, fit for purpose and immune to the vagaries of the prevailing political fashion?

Milio points …