When the U.S. Postal Service began testing postal facilities across the country for possible anthrax contamination, UNMC’s Tony Sambol found himself thrust into the spotlight as a national adviser.
In November, Sambol, laboratory project adviser at the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) at UNMC, traveled to Washington, D.C., to serve as the Association of Public Health Laboratories’ (APHL) sole liaison to the U.S. Postal Service.
For nearly a month, Sambol worked 12- to 14-hour days at the Unified Incident Command Center of the U.S. Postal Service. With road atlas in hand, Sambol’s role was to coordinate the delivery of specimens from environmental testing being done at postal facilities across the country with the nearest State Public Health Laboratory. Once the labs had been contacted, Sambol relayed information to postal service personnel at the Command Center. After tests were completed, he received verbal and written results and relayed that information to the postal service personnel. Overall, Sambol worked with approximately 34 states and about 40 labs.
“The work we had done at the NPHL really set us up to help out,” Sambol said. “APHL personnel saw what had been done in Nebraska and what we were capable of doing.”
What personnel at the NPHL have been doing is working to improve the state’s public health infrastructure and bioterrorism readiness. For the past few years, Sambol has been the coordinator of the Special Pathogens Laboratory at the NPHL, which was started at UNMC in 1998. The Special Pathogens Laboratory is involved in the testing of all material associated with the anthrax threats that the state has had. To date, all of these threats have been hoaxes.
In June, Nebraska became one of four states to receive a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve the state’s public health infrastructure and its readiness for bioterrorism. Minnesota and Michigan also received grants to create state models that could be used in the establishment of the National Laboratory System. Washington received a policy planning grant. The model systems are focused on testing services responsive to potential chemical and biological terrorism, foodborne outbreaks, emerging diseases and environmental exposures.
Sambol’s work at the NPHL included the development and statewide distribution of a CD-ROM, which outlined lab and reporting procedures for bioterrorism issues. During the “anthrax scare,” the CDC modified the CD-ROM and produced 5,000 copies to distribute in labs across the country.
“There was an immediate need for concise information to help the laboratories’ respond to bioterroristic events,” said Sambol, who, via weekend teleconference calls, also helped in a nationwide effort to develop a set of uniform laboratory protocols for testing the environmental samples taken from the postal facilities.
The state should be proud of what the Nebraska Public Health Lab has accomplished in all areas of its work, Sambol said, especially given the state’s past record of low per-capita funding for public health. “With our capabilities and teaching and expertise, we’re probably in the upper echelon of public health labs,” he said. “We have great potential to expand the public health laboratory’s capability and become an even greater resource in areas such as bioterrorism.”