ATLANTA – In the first report of its kind, U.S. health officials said the nation’s states and cities made a strong effort to prepare for a flu pandemic, bioterrorism or other emergency health crises, but big challenges remain.

“I think in terms of effort and progress, an ‘A,”‘ said Dr. Richard Besser of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when asked to assign a letter grade.

“In terms of amount of work to be done, I would say that’s absolutely enormous,” he added.

It was the government’s first assessment of the payoff from its investment of more than $5 billion since the terrorist attacks of 2001 to make the country better prepared for a variety of public health emergencies.

The report looked at the staffing, laboratory capability and other resources of state, local and territorial health departments for handling bioterrorism or other disasters.

The CDC report says Maine’s efforts to date support the federal agency’s preparedness goals in most areas surveyed. For example, it says Maine has conducted a bioterrorism readiness exercise and chemical readiness test that meet CDC criteria. It also says Maine has a pandemic influenza response plan.

But it also notes that Maine public health officials have not activated a public health emergency operations center as part of a drill or conducted a drill for key responders to test communications when power and land lines are unavailable.

The number of state and local health departments able to detect biological agents grew to 110 in 2007, up from 83 in 2002. Labs able to detect chemical agents increased to 47 from zero in 2001, the CDC found.

All states are now doing year-round flu surveillance – an important measure if the bird flu virus in Asia mutates into a more dangerous form easily spread among people, unleashing a worldwide epidemic.

Information sharing between labs and public health professionals has grown tremendously. And the count of illness-investigating epidemiologists assigned to emergency response rose to 232 in 2006 from 115 in 2001.

“Clearly we are better able to handle most public health events in this country today than we were in 2001, and that’s very good news,” said Michael Osterholm, a University Of Minnesota infectious disease expert.

Some of the bad news: Many states still do not have enough epidemiologists, and 31 states said they’re having trouble attracting qualified lab scientists. Laws need to be updated, and disease surveillance data exchange appears to be inadequate in at least 16 states.

Other public health experts said federal funding is also a problem. The CDC’s funding to state and local health departments for emergency preparedness dropped from $991 million in fiscal year 2006 to $897 million in fiscal 2007, according to the CDC report.