|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Bush Happy With Smallpox Preparation, Spokesman Says
U.S. President George W. Bush is pleased with the nation’s smallpox defense efforts but wants to continue the national smallpox immunization program, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Dec. 4). Bush wants “more front-line workers to be vaccinated,” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. U.S. officials once hoped to immunize millions of emergency workers with the smallpox vaccine, but fewer than 40,000 civilian medical personnel have so far been inoculated. Public health experts said that the low level of immunizations has left the United States vulnerable. “We are still underprepared to respond to even two cases of smallpox anywhere in the world,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “You need a core group of vaccinated workers able to go out to the front lines, and we don’t have that,” he said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, said that a report released yesterday on states’ bioterrorism preparedness did not contain any surprises (see GSN, Dec. 11). The study — conducted by Trust for America’s Health — “tells us things we’ve already known. We know we have a lot of work to do,” said Joe Henderson, associated director for terrorism preparedness and emergency response at the CDC. The trust report assigned state-by-state grades for readiness and said that state health officials have not improved their bioterrorism defenses despite an influx of federal funding. The recent U.S. reaction to SARS and flu outbreaks “demonstrate we are definitely more prepared,” Henderson said. He added that the CDC could provide a state-specific breakdown but health officials do not want to provide terrorists with specific weak points in the public health system. “We don’t tell the public because we’re afraid it might reveal too many vulnerabilities,” Henderson said (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, Dec. 12).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
