Coast Guard leader: Disaster plan needs avian flu provisions
Response plan fails to adequately lay out responsibilities in the event of a flu pandemic, Adm. Thad Allen says.
A list of emergency responsibilities included in the federal government's recently revamped plan for responding to disasters is in need of further evaluation, the Coast Guard's new chief said Tuesday.
Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said the 17 critical "emergency support functions" outlined in the National Response Plan fail to fully cover the possibility of a pandemic flu outbreak. The Homeland Security Department updated that plan -- the blueprint for how federal, state and local governments will respond to disasters -- on May 25, just in time for the June 1 start of the new hurricane season.
The plan's emergency functions section delegates first aid to the American Red Cross and general medical and health issues to the Health and Human Services Department. But the section doesn't specifically address vaccination, Allen said. He made his comments in a speech at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's higher education conference in Emmitsburg, Md.
"We don't need to resolve it for the next hurricane season," Allen said. "We need to resolve it for avian flu."
Robert Zitz, the Homeland Security Department's deputy undersecretary for preparedness, said in a separate speech at the conference that the federal government is aggressively planning to counter avian flu, should it spread in the United States.
Zitz said the government has committed "several hundred million dollars" to avian flu research and vaccines through Project BioShield, a multibillion-dollar federal initiative aimed at producing treatments for ailments stemming from disasters of natural, chemical, biological or nuclear origin.
However, according to an HHS-managed Web site dedicated to avian flu, that price tag has increased.
HHS last month announced that it had awarded more than $1 billion to five companies -- Solvay Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, MedImmune and Dynport Vaccine -- to "accelerate development and production of new technologies for influenza vaccines."
With presidential backing, $3.3 billion has been appropriated to further the study of avian flu and for the creation of a vaccine that can be prepared for about 300 million Americans.
The World Health Organization has reported that as of May 29, there were 127 deaths in 10 countries and more than 200 cases of avian flu across the globe -- but none of them in the United States.
"There is no H5N1 pandemic so it has not been possible to develop an H5N1 pandemic vaccine; however, 'pre-pandemic vaccines' have been created, are being refined and tested, and do have some promise both in furthering research and preparedness for a possible pandemic," the government's pandemic flu Web site states.
The United States is not even close to having enough vaccines to supply every American, said Richard Bissell, director of the University of Maryland-Baltimore's emergency health services graduate program.
"If we get into a pandemic [flu outbreak in America]," he said at the conference, "it's going to be family for family, individual for individual."