NEW YORK: In a report released late January, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) rated the US Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) coordination and leadership of public health emergencies as "high risk."
According to reports, GAO, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for the US Congress, has been reporting on HHS's lead role in preparing for and responding to public health emergencies for more than a decade, and it has found persistent flaws in HHS's execution of this role, according to the report titled "For the Federal Response to Covid-19, Significant Improvements in Leadership and Oversight."
"These flaws have hampered the nation's response to the current Covid-19 epidemic as well as a number of other threats, including other infectious diseases like the H1N1 influenza pandemic, Zika, and Ebola, and also extreme weather events like hurricanes," according to the report.
GAO designates federal operations or programmes as high risk when they are found to be particularly vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or in need of transformation, according to the report, and "this designation is meant to identify and help resolve serious weaknesses in areas that involve substantial public resources or provide critical services."
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