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Maryn McKenna has another excellent article on vaccines, this time on the issues being addressed by the National Influenza Vaccine Summit going on right now.
Maryn McKenna and CIDRAP News received an Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism on Mar 29 for her seven-part series, "The Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle." If you haven't read it, this award was well deserved.
Here are links to all 7 parts.
The pandemic vaccine puzzle
Part 1: Flu research: a legacy of neglect
Part 2: Vaccine production capacity falls far short
Part 3: H5N1 poses major immunologic challenges
Part 4: The promise and problems of adjuvants
Part 5: What role for prepandemic vaccination?
Part 6: Looking to novel vaccine technologies
Part 7: Time for a vaccine 'Manhattan Project'?
Bibliography
Maryn now has a blog of her own called SUPERBUG, focusing on MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), in preparation for a book she is writing.
Today Maryn gives us an up close look at the issues the National Vaccine Summit must address, after what can only be described as a frustrating flu season.
As always, I'm just going to give you a taste. It is absolutely worth your time to follow the link and read the whole article.
Flu experts try to ensure record vaccine doses get used
Maryn McKenna
Contributing Writer
May 13, 2008 – ATLANTA (CIDRAP News) – Manufacturers of influenza vaccine are poised to deliver record quantities of flu shots for the coming season. But unless medicine and public health officials find new methods and venues for getting those shots into the arms of Americans, another record may also fall: the number of influenza-vaccine doses that go unused.
The need to expand flu-vaccine use—to protect Americans' health, and also to preserve vaccine manufacturing capacity that would be needed during an influenza pandemic—topped the agenda yesterday at the start of the National Influenza Vaccine Summit.
The little-known 2-day meeting, which is sponsored each year by the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has drawn record attendance of 230 this year. It comes on the heels of a microbiological double-whammy: midseason strain changes that created one of the harshest flu seasons in recent memory, coupled with a vaccine that, because of those viral changes, protected only 44% of recipients against the flu.
The possibility that the vaccine mismatch impaired public trust in the flu shot is much on the minds of summit participants. In the just-concluded season, manufacturers made a record 140 million doses, but only 113 million were used, leaving 27 million—also a record—unbought or returned to manufacturers.
Representatives of the five companies now selling flu vaccine in the United States said Monday evening that they collectively expect to deliver from 143 million to 146 million doses next flu season, the largest amount ever brought to market here. But health authorities are concerned that consumer distrust might cause a largest-ever amount to go unused as well.
