Tweet
Bird flu and Oregon
An editorial from The Oregonian, Portland, May 5
The Associated Press
May 7, 2006
:Oregon’s public health system runs like a car with the fuel gauge near empty. Among the 50 states, we rank near the bottom — 43rd — in state funding for public health services.
So you can understand Dr. Susan Allan’s frustration with the Bush administration’s plan for an influenza pandemic. It basically tells her and all other Oregonians: “If you folks out there get hit by the flu in a big way, don’t count on Uncle Sam for much meaningful help.”
Allan, Oregon’s public health director, correctly says the $7.1 billion federal plan has been fundamentally flawed since President Bush unveiled it last November. Most of those billions are being misspent on the stockpiling of antiviral drugs and vaccines that doctors say will be of marginal value if the avian flu, or another virus, mutates into a virulent strain that spreads among humans.
This showy buildup “has political cachet,” Allan says, but it’s misdirected. It would be far more effective to put more of that money into quickly developing vaccines designed specifically for a real outbreak — and into beefing up the local health agencies that will have to respond to that outbreak.
Wednesday, the Bush administration released the second part of its flu plan, a 227-page document that makes it clearer than ever that local governments and hospitals will bear the brunt of any deadly outbreak of disease. Logistically, it’s hard to argue with that reality, but where is the federal aid to cash-strapped states like Oregon?
Out of the $7.1 billion initiative, only $100 million is pegged for state and local preparations.
“This is the mother of all unfunded mandates,” noted Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Oregon health departments are “already stretched thin,” says Allan, yet the federal plan expects the state to shoulder all disease detection and response in a pandemic, as well as distribute vaccine and antiviral drugs.
“They’re creating this massive stockpile without providing a way to deliver it,” she says.
That’s a disconnect made worse by the conclusion — shared by health professionals from coast to coast — that the stockpiling is mostly political grandstanding. Those millions of stored vaccine doses target viruses that are “not the ones that are going to make us sick,” Allan says.
And those millions of stockpiled Tamiflu antiviral capsules, which reduce flu symptoms by a mere day and a half, are of “comparative marginal value,” she says.
If a pandemic hits Oregon, health workers will get sick, too. Given that reality, there’s something galling about a mandate that already-understaffed local agencies will have to shoulder the flu fight by themselves and deliver federally stockpiled drugs that may not be terribly effective.
Part of the federal plan makes good sense. That includes Thursday’s awarding of more than $1 billion to drug manufacturers developing technology for speedier mass production of vaccines.
Those efforts, however, should be receiving much greater emphasis than the questionable stockpiling programs. And so should the financial needs of state and local health agencies that will be doing all the heavy lifting when a pandemic occurs.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps.../60505009/1048
The Associated Press
May 7, 2006
:Oregon’s public health system runs like a car with the fuel gauge near empty. Among the 50 states, we rank near the bottom — 43rd — in state funding for public health services.
So you can understand Dr. Susan Allan’s frustration with the Bush administration’s plan for an influenza pandemic. It basically tells her and all other Oregonians: “If you folks out there get hit by the flu in a big way, don’t count on Uncle Sam for much meaningful help.”
Allan, Oregon’s public health director, correctly says the $7.1 billion federal plan has been fundamentally flawed since President Bush unveiled it last November. Most of those billions are being misspent on the stockpiling of antiviral drugs and vaccines that doctors say will be of marginal value if the avian flu, or another virus, mutates into a virulent strain that spreads among humans.
This showy buildup “has political cachet,” Allan says, but it’s misdirected. It would be far more effective to put more of that money into quickly developing vaccines designed specifically for a real outbreak — and into beefing up the local health agencies that will have to respond to that outbreak.
Wednesday, the Bush administration released the second part of its flu plan, a 227-page document that makes it clearer than ever that local governments and hospitals will bear the brunt of any deadly outbreak of disease. Logistically, it’s hard to argue with that reality, but where is the federal aid to cash-strapped states like Oregon?
Out of the $7.1 billion initiative, only $100 million is pegged for state and local preparations.
“This is the mother of all unfunded mandates,” noted Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Oregon health departments are “already stretched thin,” says Allan, yet the federal plan expects the state to shoulder all disease detection and response in a pandemic, as well as distribute vaccine and antiviral drugs.
“They’re creating this massive stockpile without providing a way to deliver it,” she says.
That’s a disconnect made worse by the conclusion — shared by health professionals from coast to coast — that the stockpiling is mostly political grandstanding. Those millions of stored vaccine doses target viruses that are “not the ones that are going to make us sick,” Allan says.
And those millions of stockpiled Tamiflu antiviral capsules, which reduce flu symptoms by a mere day and a half, are of “comparative marginal value,” she says.
If a pandemic hits Oregon, health workers will get sick, too. Given that reality, there’s something galling about a mandate that already-understaffed local agencies will have to shoulder the flu fight by themselves and deliver federally stockpiled drugs that may not be terribly effective.
Part of the federal plan makes good sense. That includes Thursday’s awarding of more than $1 billion to drug manufacturers developing technology for speedier mass production of vaccines.
Those efforts, however, should be receiving much greater emphasis than the questionable stockpiling programs. And so should the financial needs of state and local health agencies that will be doing all the heavy lifting when a pandemic occurs.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps.../60505009/1048
Comment