U.S. Not Ready For Bird Flu, Experts Say
By Donald G. McNeil Jr. The New York Times
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2006
WASHINGTON The 5,000 state and local health
departments in the United States are rushing to plan
for an epidemic of avian flu, but they say they are
hobbled by a lack of money and guidance from the
federal government.
Only a few places, particularly Seattle and New York
City, have made significant progress, experts say.
Most departments say they expect to be unprepared
for at least a year.
"It's a depressing situation," said Jeffrey Levi, a flu
expert at the Trust for America's Health, a
nonpartisan health policy group. "We are way, way
behind."
Under the national response plan issued by the Bush
administration on Nov. 2, the national government
took primary responsibility for creating stockpiles of
vaccines and anti-viral drugs. But the states and
local governments were left to be responsible for
quarantines, delivering vaccinations and assuring that
the sick receive medical care.
Under the national response plan issued by the Bush
administration on Nov. 2, the national government
took primary responsibility for creating stockpiles of
vaccines and anti-viral drugs. But the states and
local governments were left to be responsible for
quarantines, delivering vaccinations and assuring that
the sick receive medical care.
Of the $7.1 billion President George W. Bush
requested for fighting avian flu, Congress provided
only $3.3 billion for this year. Bush was expected
Monday to ask for an additional $2.65 billion for 2007.
The bulk is for vaccine and drug research, while only
$350 million is for local health departments.
That $350 million sounds like a lot, but divided among
5,000 health departments, it's only $70,000 each,"
said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, chief of communicable
diseases for the Seattle and King County health
department.
Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged at
a conference of avian flu experts in Washington last
week that the nation's strategy was one of "buying
time" until millions of doses of vaccines and anti-viral
drugs could be produced.
"If we prepare now," Gerberding said, "we may be
able to decrease the death rate and keep society
functioning."
Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of
Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of
Sciences, was more pessimistic.
"We're completely unprepared," Fineberg said, adding
that if an epidemic struck in the next year, a
quarantine-based strategy "is likely to be all we're
going to have as a strategy."
Bird flu human infection is still rare, but it has killed
about half of the 161 people known to have been
infected, and officials fear it will mutate into a form
that spreads easily among people.
Even if a vaccine were available, few communities
would be prepared to dispense it quickly - a problem
emphatically demonstrated by two years of failure to
provide routine flu shots to millions of Americans.
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