Bush to announce US bird flu plan
Bush to announce US bird flu plan
Maggie Fox Reuters/Washington
A U.S. plan for helping handle a pandemic of deadly bird flu, to be outlined by President George W. Bush later on Tuesday (Wednesday morning in Jakarta), is expected to center on strengthening the vaccine industry.
The H5N1 avian flu sweeping flocks of poultry in Asia and parts of Europe has infected 122 people and killed 62, but experts say it could make a leap into humans and cause a deadly pandemic.
No one can predict if or when, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that no country is prepared to battle a pandemic of H5N1 influenza or any other disease that may cause widespread disruption.
The United States is especially poorly prepared, U.S. officials agree, although experts have been warning for years of the potential for a pandemic.
Hospitals are often filled to overflowing already and have no extra "surge capacity" to handle the hundreds of thousands of people who might fall ill in a pandemic. Pharmacies have just enough stock to handle immediate demand for drugs, and, perhaps worst of all, hardly anyone makes vaccines any more.
In 2003 the Institute of Medicine, an independent body that advises the federal government, said the U.S. health care system does not place enough value on immunization.
In the 1970s more than 25 companies produced vaccine for the U.S. market, compared to five now, only two of which are based in the United States.
Recent vaccine shortages have disrupted annual influenza immunization efforts and childhood vaccines. The technology for making flu vaccines is 40 years old, dependent on eggs, and takes months to produce a single dose.
Vaccine makers say the American market is perilous, with razor-thin profits, complicated regulations and an increasingly hostile public prone to lawsuits over adverse events from vaccination.
The Bush administration has made some efforts to remedy this, but an attempt in 2002 to slip provisions protecting vaccine makers into the Homeland Security Act were immediately decried by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Last month Bush met with the chief executive officers of some of the corporate vaccine makers. They included Merck & Co. Inc., Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline, MedImmune, Chiron Corp. and sanofi pasteur, the vaccine unit of Sanofi-Aventis.