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Thursday, September 26, 2002Dr. Mack Sewell, New Mexico's state epidemiologist, said achieving that level of readiness "is a matter of time, attention and resources," all of which are uncertain at this point. Earlier this summer, federal officials said they would recommend "preattack" vaccination for up to 500,000 emergency workers, but state officials complain that they have received little or no guidance on the critical question of how much vaccine will be made available, and when, or who will have to be immunized ahead of time so they can carry out the mass vaccinations. "They've really been bobbing and weaving on this," said Gary L. Simpson, director of the New Mexico infectious disease bureau. "We've looked at numbers that range from 500 up to 50,000 people, and that's just in New Mexico." Federal officials said a plan for vaccinating emergency health care workers, after repeated delays, was to be made public by month's end. Judging from my email discussion groups, this is widespread. Nothing has been communicated to the local departments on vaccination of healthcare workers. Dr. Tucker added that good public communication, vital to the plan's success, seemed to be an afterthought. "It's very unclear whether C.D.C. or the states are developing the necessary communication strategy to prevent panic in the event of an outbreak," he said. Again, my email discussion groups indicated that no communication strategy is in the works. The public health doctors say across the board that they feel educating local physicians is the duty of professional societies, not the health department. They only consider it their responsibility to administer the vaccine. Yet, even one case of smallpox is a devastating public health problem. We practicing physicians have to know what to do if a case walks into the office. Do we lock everyone in the building until they can be vaccinated to ensure that they don’t carry it out to the community? Where does the patient go for quarantine? Who do we call to find out, especially if you’re in an emergency room at 2AM? These things need to be answered if the CDC approach of mass voluntary vaccination only after an attack is to be effective. posted by Sydney on 9/26/2002 07:34:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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