| February
12, 2002
Vaccines commonly used to prevent chicken pox and other childhood diseases
are in short supply, both locally and across the country.
And that has health care officials concerned.
“This really puts a damper on getting kids started with their immunizations,”
said Nancy Bancroft, a public health nurse with the Stanislaus County
Health Services Agency in Modesto.
Bancroft’s agency, which immunized about 40,000 children last year,
recently ran out of chicken pox vaccine.
A new shipment expected about two weeks ago still has not arrived. Until
it does, all doctors and nurses can do is ask parents to bring their children
back later – and then hope that they do.
The situation at the Health Services Agency on Scenic Drive in Modesto
is being repeated in communities throughout the valley and the nation.
A federal panel in Washington heard Monday from doctors who say they
routinely are having to turn away parents seeking immunizations for their
children because of the limited supply of vaccines.
The shortage has been building for at least the last two years, experts
said. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there
were severe shortages in eight of 11 vaccines, including for chicken pox
and DTaP, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
“It’s bad,” said Dr. Louis Cooper, president of the
American Academy of Pediatrics. “We’ve spent 30 years building
a total pediatric prevention program around vaccines. Suddenly we’re
having to tell them we don’t have any vaccines.”
The panel did not recommend a plan, but said creating vaccine stockpiles
and giving drug companies financial incentives to continue researching
and developing vaccines were among the suggestions offered.
“If we want manufacturers to put in research, there has to be a
profit incentive,” said Dr. Jerome Klein, a Boston University School
of Medicine professor and member of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee.
He and others noted that the cost of research often cuts a company’s
profit margin.
The shortage could set back the vaccination program at a time when immunization
rates are higher than ever. Today, more than 90 percent of America’s
toddlers receive critical vaccines by age 2.
In 1993, less than 63 percent of children under age 3 had received the
full course of vaccinations.
“The real concern we have is that children who are turned away
won’t comb back or won’t be reached when vaccine supplies
are available,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the CDC’s
national immunization program. “We’re quite worried we might
see the return of some outbreaks.”
House lawmakers have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate
the shortages, which have many causes.
In the case of the tetanus vaccine, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories unexpectedly
left the market last year, so Aventis Pasteur is now the only major supplier
of tetanus shots in the United States.
Demand has led to a shortage of the popular new vaccine Prevnar, which
fights the bacterium streptococcus pneumoniae, the leading cause of pneumonia,
meningitis and millions of ear infections every year in children.
Still, drug companies and experts believe the shortage will end this
year.
Doctors “can’t understand how this country can have a shortage,”
Cooper said. “It’s destabilizing our vaccine effort in a period
of incredible, unparalleled success.”
Bee staff writer Kerry McCray contributed to this
report.
The Stanislaus County Health Services Agency offers
immunizations for children at 820 Scenic Drive, Modesto. The walk-in clinic
is open 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. For information,
call 558-8872 or 558-8866.
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Reprinted by permission of The Modesto Bee.
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