Earl Bockenfeld's Radio Weblog

The shortage caught many Americans by surprise, but it followed decades of warnings from health experts who said the nation's system for vaccine supply and distribution was growing increasingly fragile.

"We're in the middle of a crisis that could have been averted,'' said Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and director of its national center for disaster preparedness.

In particular, public health experts have long cautioned against the country's dependence on a few vaccine makers, and yet this has become standard practice. There are now only two major manufacturers for the nation's supply of flu vaccine, and at least a half-dozen other vaccines are made by single suppliers. Britain, by contrast, has spread its order for flu vaccines among five suppliers, precisely to avoid the kind of predicament America now faces.

In recent years there have been many significant disruptions of vaccine supplies. Between November 2000 and May 2003, there were shortages of 8 of the 11 vaccines for childhood diseases in the United States, including those for tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, mumps and chicken pox. There have been flu vaccine shortages or miscues for four consecutive years.

The long lines, the shortages, etc. have been predicted for some time and stand as an indictment against this Administration's public health policy (more on that coming) as well as its ability to fight bio-terror. The smallpox vaccination plan for first providers was, to be very charitable, only a modest success as the government did not address safety questions nor show good cause for the potentially risky vaccine (in a real emergency the benefit far outweighs the risk but not for a theoretical scare, and many first providers refused the vaccine).

The Times does a nice job of chronicling that this was not an overnight issue. The government did a poor job on flu preparation and there will be a political price to pay. Seniors, already riled about medicare benefits, vote.

[Knight Ridder reports that there was no problem in England BECAUSE THEY KNEW ABOUT THIS IN AUGUST AND PLANNED FOR IT!!! So why didn't the U.S. know?]

"Armed with essentially the same information [as England had], however, U.S. officials relied on Chiron's early assurances that only a small portion of the flu vaccine from its Liverpool plant was contaminated."

"The British also could fall back on a half-dozen other suppliers that had been pre-approved by British authorities. The United States had only one other major supplier, Aventis Pasteur."

"Some health experts now suggest that if U.S. officials had relied less on Chiron's early assurances and acted more swiftly, they could have at least limited the damage caused by the loss of half the U.S. supply."

"Tony Jewell, a spokesman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said the federal government saw no reason to begin looking for replacement supplies in August, when the British did.

"'We had no indication from the company or MHRA until October 5 that the entire 48 million doses were in jeopardy,' he said. 'As soon as we learned in October, we contacted Aventis Pasteur to purchase several million more.'

"Chiron, based in California, first told U.S. and British officials about contamination problems on Aug. 25, saying it planned to destroy 4 million doses of flu vaccine."
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[What's going on here is US relied on the WORD of a private company. It's kind of like their "faith-based" war policy--of not having enough troops and having no plan. Now we have "faith-based" medicine. Only it's not faith in Christ. It's faith in CORPORATIONS!]
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