Supply, Demand and the H1N1 Vaccine
The Protection that Wasn’t
Top U.S. health officials gathered recently to talk about something you wouldn’t normally hear them talk about: What went wrong.
The general consensus was that a lot went wrong with the H1N1 vaccine, and the problems started right from the beginning. As news of a possible pandemic spread, so did public demand for a vaccine. But for months a vaccine was non-existent. When ample supply finally arrived, demand for it disappeared right along with the fleeting H1N1 threat.
How did this happen?
This wasn’t a meeting to point fingers although if the whole truth were ever told, there’d probably be plenty of opportunity for that. But what I and many attending this gathering find especially troubling is the amount of advance notice health officials had of this potential bio-threat.
With so much time to create a workable plan for protection, you’d think the vaccine roll out would have been flawless. Yet it took months to get enough supply to vaccinate everyone who wanted one. And now that there’s an abundance of vaccine, few want it and millions of unused doses will probably be destroyed.
We may never know all the answers
What is known is that 250 million vaccines were ordered right away; manufacturers didn’t begin work on a vaccine until mid-spring; health officials didn’t start receiving vaccines until October; what they received was limited; and when ample supply finally arrived it was too late.
Some justification for the long delay has been given. Manufacturers had trouble growing the virus. And then there were problems inserting the virus into vials. Adding to the problem was the manufacturers themselves. Five where enlisted to help manufacture enough supply, but each went about the process in a different way so much of what was delivered could not be universally administered.
Fortunately the H1N1 threat didn’t live up to its expectations and most of us made it through the scare without the vaccines. Sadly though, the H1N1 virus was responsible for thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations. Health officials still can’t pinpoint the numbers because they just don’t know. And that too is frustrating.
All of this makes me wonder why a country as medically and technologically advanced as the United States couldn’t roll out the protection its citizens needed when they needed it most. I don’t know the final price tag of the H1N1 vaccine mess, but undoubtedly it was high.
Who’s on guard?
While cost is a factor, what we should be more concerned about is the next potential bio-threat and whether these highly paid intellectuals will a better job protecting us next time.
Just last year, Chinese officials quarantined an entire town to ward off the spread of a pneumonic plague. Apparently this plague contained the same bacteria many believe was responsible for the centuries-old bubonic plague.
I hope someone in that recent gathering of top health officials is paying close attention to what could turn out to be the next big health scare!
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