U.S. officials said yesterday that the national smallpox immunization campaign had come to an effective halt, the New York Times reported (see GSN, June 13).

The civilian smallpox immunization program, which was intended to inoculate 500,000 civilian health care workers by the end of February, has so far immunized only 37,608 volunteers.  Health officials said 100 more are being immunized each week.

The U.S. Defense Department has immunized 454,856 military personnel, and is inoculating 1,000 each week as a “maintenance” effort, according to Col. John Grabenstein, who ran the defense immunization effort.

Raymond Strikas, who directed the civilian immunization program for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that volunteer interest had dropped off after March and the program was now paused.

The U.S. military victory in Iraq, a long delay in the compensation plan for sickened volunteers (see GSN, May 1) and other public health concerns hampered the program, according to Strikas.  U.S. President George W. Bush originally indicated the vaccine would eventually be available to the general public, “but there’s been relatively little clamoring for that,” Strikas said.  “We accept where we are, given the circumstances.  We can make this work,” he added (Donald McNeil, New York Times, June 19).

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