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Smallpox: Two Hospitals Balk at Bush Immunization Plan Two U.S. teaching hospitals have announced they are opting out of the voluntary U.S. plan to immunize up to 10 million emergency health care workers across the United States against smallpox, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Dec. 17). Emergency workers and intensive care personnel at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta will not be required to take the vaccine, officials at those hospitals said. Officials at three other medical facilities, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Emory Medical Center in Atlanta and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics are considering not immunizing their personnel, the Post reported. Grady Memorial is closely linked with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control — which is responsible for running the immunization program — but officials there cited the vaccine’s dangerous side effects, particularly among those with suppressed immune systems. The vaccine could spread from immunized hospital workers to patients who may be more at risk of adverse reactions, one official said. “I don’t like to cause disease,” said Carlos del Rio, chief of medicine at Grady Memorial. “If, say, a patient with AIDS became infected, that would be a disaster,” he added. Virginia Commonwealth University officials questioned whether the vaccine is necessary at all, noting the incremental approach to immunizations in the U.S. plan. “There is a lack of logic to the current proposal,” said Richard Wenzel, chairman of the internal medicine department at Virginia Commonwealth. “If our government in all its intelligence thinks smallpox exists in enemy hands, why would we creep up on that policy? We would rush to vaccinate everybody right now,” he added. The CDC expects some hospitals to choose against the inoculation program, but most will probably cooperate, said CDC head Julie Gerberding. “This is a voluntary program,” she said. “We understand not all hospitals will choose to participate,” she added (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, Dec. 18).
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