WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON -- Some of the nation's leading medical organizations warned Thursday that the government's massive smallpox vaccination program will strain already overburdened public health and emergency medical systems.
Speakers representing state and local public health agencies, nurses, emergency room physicians and the nation's hospitals said President Bush had not convinced them that the threat of a bioterrorism attack using the smallpox virus was great enough to merit his program's substantial diversion of public health resources and its health risks to medical personnel.
Their testimony came at the end of a long day of technical presentations to an advisory panel set up by the Institute of Medicine at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The plan Bush announced Dec. 13 calls for the vaccination of 500,000 military personnel and 439,000 health-care workers who would volunteer to be members of smallpox response teams -- the doctors, nurses and public health workers who would treat and investigate smallpox cases. Vaccine would be made available to all Americans starting in 2004, but Bush stressed that the government was not recommending the vaccine for the public.
The health-care providers reminded committee members that Bush's vaccination plan will be implemented in the real world, where there is a severe nursing shortage, emergency rooms are overburdened, public health agencies are strapped for cash and Americans face far more common health threats than smallpox.
"As critical as it is that we be prepared to respond to a smallpox attack, it cannot come at the expense" of other public health programs, said Dr. George E. Hardy, executive director of the Assn. of State and Territorial Health Officials.
"Tuberculosis, E. coli and measles are not taking a furlough," warned Patrick M. Libbey, executive director of the National Assn. of County and City Health Officials.
As of Thursday, the Pentagon had vaccinated 174 people. Vaccination of response team members is expected to begin as soon as late January, and inoculation of up to 10 million fire, police and other medical and emergency personnel is scheduled to begin sometime after that.
All the medical group representatives urged the government to slow down. Hardy warned that moving from the first phase of the program to a broad vaccination plan without taking the time to reevaluate "has the real potential to do more harm than good."
