Flu shots shortage

[tonado]

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/whoshouldget.htm

 

US is the rich country and we don't have enough flu shots. Can you believe it? This is going to be a bad winter.

[frank1538]

Part of the problem is economic. US drug/vaccine producers have the wherewithall make vaccines, but there's more money in making other drugs. Consequently, the US has had to turn to other non US sources to produce the vaccines. Governmental agencies don't want to pay the domestic drug companies a higher price for the vaccines, and the domestic drug manufacturers don't want to be forced into doing something less profitable. I'll stop here rather than drifing into the politics of this.

[tonado]

Chicken soup replaces flu vaccine

October 14, 2004

 

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. --People who went to a local clinic to get a flu shot didn't receive the vaccine they wanted. Instead, they received an old-fashioned remedy.

 

The estimated 20 people who went to the flu shot clinic Friday at Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union were sent home with a can of chicken soup and a pack of tissues.

 

Nick Mariotti, the branch supervisor, said the idea started out as a joke when he and his staff learned they had to cancel the clinic because of the nationwide shortage of flu vaccines.

 

Mariotti decided to buy a case of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and a bunch of tissues. He said the workers "kept them at the front desk, so when people walked in for the flu shot clinic, we could break the news lightly."

 

When the vaccine seekers turned to leave without their flu shot, Mariotti pointed to the soup and said: "Maybe this will help."

 

Most left with smiles on their faces, he said.

 

Kris Ehresmann, who heads the state's immunization program, was impressed.

 

"Well, you know, it's better than nothing," she said with a laugh.

[tonado]

As shortage of flu vaccine persists, health officials fight price gouging

By Daniel Yee, Associated Press, 10/14/2004 03:01

 

Caught off-guard by a last-minute flu vaccine shortage, hospitals and health officials are grappling with a side-effect perhaps more virulent than the bug itself: price gouging.

 

Around the country, officials say some vaccine suppliers are trying to cash in on the flu shot shortage by hiking up prices for hospitals and pharmacies. A recent survey found that the vaccine is sometimes being offered for 10 times its original value.

 

''Shame on the people who are price-gouging,'' said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ''There's no room for this kind of behavior in an environment where we need to pull together as a country to protect our vulnerable populations.''

 

Federal prosecutors could use a variety of fraud, conspiracy and other charges to pursue individuals or companies thought to be engaging in price-gouging. Some states are taking their own action.

 

Attorneys general in Kansas and Florida are suing Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Meds-Stat for allegedly trying to seek ''unconscionable profits'' by offering pharmacies flu shots for prices way above normal.

 

Connecticut officials have received numerous complaints about price gouging, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. He said his office is investigating and may announce action against some flu shot providers as early as Thursday.

 

Blumenthal said the high prices hurt the elderly, the ill and the young those recommended for flu shots: ''Obviously the shortage of a vaccine combined with these very alarming abuses make these people victims twice over because they lack the vaccine and they may be price-gouged.''

 

The nationwide scramble for the vaccine was triggered when Chiron Corp. one of two firms that make the vaccine announced it would be unable to provide the estimated 48 million shots expected this year. That's nearly half the supply federal health officials had counted on.

 

The remaining firm, Aventis Pasteur, can't make more vaccine in time for the flu season and it has only about 55.4 million doses available for this season, simply not enough to go around. The government is negotiating with other vaccine makers in hopes of shaking loose a bit more.

 

When a flu shot leaves the factory, Aventis charges $8.50 for it, and the company says it has not raised the price since Chiron's announcement. But prices easily can rise under the existing distribution system, which allows vaccines to travel from manufacturer to middleman before it reaches a hospital or doctor's office. Those inflated costs are then passed on to consumers.

 

A recent survey by the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists indicated that the price of the vaccine went up more than four times the original market value. In some cases, the survey showed, the vaccine is being offered at $800 or more per 10-dose vial, which is more than 10 times the original value.

 

''There are companies out there that buy up and speculate on drugs that they think are at short supply and turn around and resell them at 10 to 100 times the mark up,'' said Bryant Herring, assistant pharmacy director for Wellmont Health System in Kingsport, Tenn., which has declined flu shot offers ranging from $65 to $100 a dose.

 

''It drives up health care costs and also limits the availability for patients who may not be able to afford it or need it most,'' Herring added.

 

In Wichita, Kan., officials at Wesley Medical Center needed 2,800 flu shots, but their supplier couldn't provide them. Plenty of other distributors were ready to meet his needs, though for a price: as much as $600 for a vial of 10 flu shots that normally costs around $80.

 

With no other choices, Jack Bond, the hospital's pharmacy director, said he thought about paying that price ''as a last resort.'' Fortunately, other health providers in the area came to the rescue, sharing their supplies.

 

The sudden nationwide crunch also may have inspired thieves to swipe 60 boxes of vaccine enough for 620 children from a suburban Denver medical office. Hospitals in Colorado have been offered vaccine for about $100 a shot.

 

As one remedy to problems caused by the shortage, the CDC and Aventis announced Tuesday a plan to redistribute the company's remaining shots directly to pediatricians, nursing homes and other places that care for high-risk patients.

 

''The new distribution plan... will minimize price-gouging because it will keep the vaccine out of that rather diffuse distribution system of professional distributors and sub-distributors,'' said vaccine expert Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

 

It also will provide a shot in the arm to areas completely devoid of the vaccine.

 

''You can't get a flu shot at any price in Nashville they're gone,'' Schaffner lamented.

[tonado]

This is crazy.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Thousands Line Up for Dwindling Flu Shots

By JENNIFER BUNDY

Associated Press Writer

 

SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Seventy-year-old Homer Fink spent eight hours sitting next to a supermarket Halloween display for a flu shot that he wasn't able to get at five other places. The scene was repeated across the country as the nation's suddenly limited supply of flu vaccine was drained.

"I've had five bypasses and six stents in me now. I need the shot," said Fink, who got the third spot in line by arriving at 1 a.m. Friday for a clinic scheduled to start at 9 at the Kroger store. It was the last vaccination clinic in the area.

 

In state after state, people lined up at pharmacies and supermarkets in the middle of the night: old folks with oxygen tanks, sleeping children bundled up in strollers, people in wheelchairs. In the San Francisco area, a 79-year-old woman died Thursday from head injuries after collapsing from exhaustion. She had waited four hours in a flu shot line with hundreds of other seniors. Two elderly women in Concord, Calif., were hospitalized after collapsing in a vaccine line.

 

Hundreds of people had to be turned away Saturday at a Giant supermarket in Alexandria, Va., a suburb of Washington, because only 200 doses were available, clinic supervisors said. People had started lining up at 5 a.m. and those lucky enough to make the cutoff, mostly elderly, ended up waiting in folding chairs that lined the store aisles.

 

A woman was arrested Friday in Shreveport, La., for disorderly conduct, accused of yelling at a police officer who was trying to move a crowd back. Some 600 people had showed up for 250 doses of vaccine.

 

The temperature neared 90 Friday in Clovis, Calif., as 78-year-old Russ Rock waited in line at a pharmacy, holding ticket No. 264 out of 300 handed out that morning. It was his second day trying to get a shot.

 

"If anybody told me I'd have to go through all of this to get a flu shot, I don't think I would have gotten one," Rock said, surrounded by other seniors sharing a bit of shade along the side of the building.

 

More than a quarter of the 200,000 residents of West Virginia's Kanawha County usually get a flu shot each year, said Dr. Kerry Gateley, who heads the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department.

 

But this fall, all sources in the county, including doctors, hospitals and Kroger, got only 12,000 doses, Gateley said.

 

By 7:30 a.m. Friday, more than 400 people had lined up inside the South Charleston Kroger store and managers concerned about exceeding fire-code capacity told others to wait outside. Some were in wheelchairs, others had portable oxygen devices or canes.

 

The store gave its 350 doses of the vaccine only to those at high risk of flu complications. Most of those were elderly, and a few were children with chronic conditions.

 

India Rush, 41, brought her 5-year-old grandson, Marcus Smith, because he has asthma.

 

"His pediatrician didn't have the flu shot. He's having to miss school or be late," Rush said. "I hate that because he is going to get behind. What can you do?"

 

Rush and Marcus arrived at the store at 3:40 a.m. He slept for hours in a stroller next to the organic frozen food cooler. When he finally got his shot - after a struggle and lots of tears - the nurse gave him $1 to buy a treat.

 

Louise Garten, 79, of South Charleston, started waiting at 2:40 a.m. because she has a history of pneumonia.

 

"I resent the fact the private physicians don't have the shots to take care of their patients," she said. "The doctors should have it, then we wouldn't have this mess. You're sick, who can you rely on if you can't rely on your doctor?"

 

Just 250 doses of flu vaccine were available at an Albertsons supermarket in Tampa, Fla., and 65-year-old Suzanne Moore was No. 221 on the list as she sat in a lawn chair reading a magazine just inside the store's front door Friday afternoon.

 

"I'm real concerned," said Moore, bald from cancer treatments. "I have cancer and I'm taking chemotherapy. It's vital for my immune system that I be inoculated. I don't understand it all how it's gotten to this point."

 

People pushed, shoved and accused each other of cutting in line Saturday outside a Safeway supermarket in San Francisco, but that didn't deter Rebecca Chen, who spent all night in line in the parking lot to save a spot for her parents. Hundreds of others were turned away.

 

"My mom's very sick, she has cancer," said Chen, 42. "My dad's 76 and has diabetes and other health problems. It was one night for me, but it probably saved them from 10 nights in the hospital."

[keelec]

It makes one wonder how we ever survived BEFORE the flu shot.

 

How did children ever go to those cesspools of germs named schools and daycares without flu shots every year? Heaven Forbid we'd run out of the Chicken Pox vaccine.

 

Will businesses acrooss America shut down if all the executives don't get the shots?

 

Yes, I can understand the mortality risk in some nursing homes... but for most other people the flu is just an inconvenience.

 

---------

 

Is this a sign of the dangers of outsourcing... Well, it is just as likely that an American company would have messed up a batch of vaccines... Howevever, at least it would have left control in the USA.

 

----- Clifford ------

[keelec]

This morning I heard on the news....

 

A presidential candidate apparently suggested that we should setup a "Strategic Reserve" of the flu vaccine......

 

How can we have candidates for US President that are so completely out of it that they show an absolute lack of understanding of the basic issues they are arguing.

 

 

The Flu vaccine is very different than any other vaccine that we have.

 

For example,

- Smallpox, ONE vaccine will prevent all "wild" forms of the disease.

- Chickenpox, ONE vaccine will prevent the disease.

- Anthrax, ONE vaccine will prevent "wild" forms of the disease.

 

Most of the vaccines can be stored essentially indefinitely. Thus, we can

Thus, we can stockpile them. The only shortcoming is that our vaccines were developed for the "wild", or naturally occurring forms of the diseases, and not designed to prevent specifically engineered military/biowarfare forms of the diseases.

 

FLU IS DIFFERENT

Part of the virus's virulence is that i is an easily mutated virus. Thus, new forms develop each year.

 

To combat the new strains of flu virus, NEW VACCINES MUST BE MADE EVERY YEAR.

Sometime in the spring a committee somewhere tries to guess the THREE most likely strains of the virus to be spreading the next fall. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they miss and the vaccine is completely ineffective.

 

It takes nearly half a year to develop the new vaccines.

 

Thus, the decision about which viruses will be prevalent is made just in time to grow a new batch of vaccines.

 

Thus, due to the short-lived hit&run nature of the virus strains, one needs to get revaccinated every year.

 

Stockpiling and giving last year's vaccine would likely be more dangerous than just giving everyone saltwater injections to people calling them flu shots. With our current technology, a Strategic Reserve would be Preposterous!

 

Come-on candidates… The position is to lead the free world. GET A CLUE!!!

[yyp]

When visiting the pharmacy I mentioned to the pharmacist that I was sure they did not have the flu shots available.

 

He confirmed that fact but told me there was plenty of the flu mist available and suggested that I use that instead.

 

The pharmacist told me he believed the flu mist is more effective in preventing the flu due to the fact that the flu shot vaccine is dead viruses whereas the flu mist was live but weaken viruses.

 

It has a greater chance of giving you a small flu over the shot vaccine as it is a life virus but that is its strong point. Being live viruses it will give your system a stronger dose of the virus which will create a greater immunity.

 

He also told me that the flu mist should be more effective as it is ingested through the nostrils where flu tends to first attack us, so there will be greater immunity in the nostril cavities.

 

It amazes me how in the U.S. we enjoy to take up such an event and complain bitterly in the media about the shortage….and never mention there is an available alternative….that works better.

[Guest enight]

Chinese doesn't get flu... lucky me!...

[Davter]

It is for sure that not everybody can get the flu shot, we just called our doctor and were told that there is no flu shot for us this year, they only give flu shots to the people that have serious medical conditions like pregnant or heart problems, ect...but babies of 6 months and up can get flu shots.

We got some flu medicine from china, it will be good to get prepared.

[tonado]

Chinese doesn't get flu... lucky me!...

Enight,

 

You are a very healthy person. I got the flu two years ago and it was a terrible experience (5 days in bed with body aches).

[warpedbored]

Chinese doesn't get flu... lucky me!...

BANGKOK, Thailand – Millions of volunteers led by emergency teams fanned out across Thailand on Thursday in a new drive to fight bird flu after the prime minister gave officials 30 days to eradicate the epidemic.

Advertisement

 

 

In China, local officials have been put on "high alert" against bird flu and ordered to step up disinfection and surveillance of poultry after Thailand reported possible human-to-human transmission of the disease.

 

China's Agriculture Ministry told officials to stockpile vaccines, warning that "the epidemic, still haunting some Asian countries, poses a risk to China," the official China Daily newspaper reported. Officials were told to disinfect farms, slaughterhouses, markets, refrigerator warehouses and shipping, the report said.

 

The bird flu scare grew after Thailand reported that its latest bird flu victim likely contracting the virus from her daughter, the first probable case of human-to-human transmission in the country.

 

Ten people have died of bird flu in Thailand and 20 in Vietnam, while more than 100 million chickens and poultry have died or been culled to stop it since a severe strain of the virus spread across large swaths of Asia early this year.

 

On Thursday, Thai Agriculture Minister Somsak Thepsutin said his nation's offensive against the disease "begins from this minute."

 

Somsak told reporters that livestock officials are directing "millions of volunteers and officials ... to X-ray every spot nationwide, to cull the sick chickens and properly bury them."

 

He said Thailand had faced setbacks in fighting bird flu, or avian influenza, blaming rural villagers for ignoring government rules that require them to inform officials when they have found dead chickens and provide complete health records when they enter hospitals.

 

"When a small number of chickens die, people think, 'never mind' and keep the information to themselves," Somsak said. "But from now on, volunteers will go into every village and report every single case to officials."

 

The anti-bird flu drive began after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared a national war against the disease on Wednesday. He gave ministers until Oct. 31 to wipe out the disease or face the sack.

 

But Dr. Kumara Rai, the acting Thailand representative of the WHO, said "eradicating the virus in one month, I'm sorry to say, is almost impossible."

 

Thai health officials on Tuesday confirmed that a 26-year-old woman, Pranee Sodchuen, died of bird flu on Sept. 20, probably after catching it while taking care of her daughter Sakuntala.

 

The 11-year-old, who is believed to have been ill with the disease, died Sept. 12 but was cremated before tests to confirm the disease could be conducted.

 

Pranee's 32-year-old sister, who also tended to Sakuntala in the hospital, was diagnosed with bird flu Monday and is now in an isolation ward.

 

International health experts have said that the likely transmission of the virus from Sakuntala to Pranee appeared to be an isolated "dead-end" incident, rather than the start of a major outbreak.

 

Scientists fear that if the virus mutates enough to mix with the human influenza virus it could easily pass between humans and trigger a global pandemic.

 

China said in March that it had defeated the disease after killing 9 million chickens and other poultry in a sweeping anti-disease effort. A new outbreak was reported in July, when the government said tests showed chickens had died of the disease on a farm in the eastern province of Anhui.

 

The China Daily cited official concern at seasonal migrations of wild birds that might carry the virus, but said the government order didn't give any steps to be taken with them.

[Guest enight]

if they got flu then they might not be a pure blood Chinese!

 

kidding kidding, ha ha ...

[kfman]

Why blame the government always??? Seems like trial lawyers and unrestrained lawsuits have driven any type of profit from the makers of flu vaccines.. so they dont want to be sued every year, and pay out the rear. I think its a personal responsibilty to keep yourself healthy. I have not had a flu shot in years, and have not had the flu in years. I live in Pennsylvania, and spent 6 years living in Montana... not exactly warm places..

 

People should just take good care of their health, and not always expect the government to be the end all salvation in life..

[Rubymoon]

I think its a personal responsibilty to keep yourself healthy. I have not had a flu shot in years, and have not had the flu in years.  I live in Pennsylvania, and spent 6 years living in Montana... not exactly warm places..

 

People should just take good care of their health, and not always expect the government to be the end all salvation in life..

Well sometimes it is a little hard to keep yourself healthy even though you are trying, I believe nobody wants to get sick unless the one wants to end his or her life.

Flu is a kind of virus spreads easily in the crowds, it's different from the cold, I think this type of virus easily gets killed in cold winter. There are some kinds of flu viruses, and the shot is only for a certain type.

Is it one of the reasons for the government to exist is to help ordinary people?