Fresh floods, fires and looting rode in the destructive wake of Hurricane Katrina, deepening a humanitarian crisis that left hundreds feared dead and sections of New Orleans submerged to the rooftops. (Photo: Xinhua/REUTERS)

    Beijing, Dec. 8 (Xinhuanet)-- The US government and most of the states are not prepared to handle emergency like a pandemic or bioterror attack, according to a report released on Tuesday.

    That's the grim conclusion of Trust for America's Health third annual report entitled "Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health from Disease, Disasters, and Bioterrorism."

    In the report, the federal government received a grade of D+ for post-9/11 public health emergency preparedness.

    And more than half the states got a score of five or less out of 10 possible points for key indicators of health emergency preparedness, such as capabilities to test for chemical and biological threats and hospital surge capacity to care for patients in a mass emergency, according to a prepared statement released by the non-profit health advocacy organization.

    "We need to stop shrugging our shoulders and start rolling up our sleeves," said Lowell Weicker Jr., the organization's president and former U.S. senator and governor of Connecticut. "The response to Hurricane Katrina was a sharp indictment of America's emergency response capabilities. This report provides further evidence of the major gap between response 'plans' and 'realities.' We need to get real in our planning for health emergencies."

     On Monday, U.S. health officials urged state and local governments to hold summits as soon as possible to plan for a possible pandemic.

     "Hospitals in over 40 percent of states do not have sufficient backup supplies of medical equipment to meet surge capacity needs during a pandemic flu or other major infectious disease outbreak," the Trust report reads.

    "Over one-quarter of states do not have sufficient bioterrorism laboratory response capabilities," it adds. Enditem

    (Agencies)