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Flu vaccine system better, still not perfect.

With delays and shortages less an issue, public health workers and physicians are looking for ways to expand demand and meet Healthy People 2010 objectives.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. June 10, 2002.

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Atlanta -- Walter A. Orenstein, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Immunization Program, is smiling. Problems with the influenza vaccine appear to be fading. At this year's National Influenza Vaccine Summit in Atlanta, he was able to talk optimistically about the possibility of meeting Healthy People 2010 goals, rather than just looking for ways to address the most immediate supply problems.

"We've had major improvements in vaccine production, and now we can talk about our goal of 152 million doses for 2010," he said to the more than 50 physicians, public health officials, vaccine manufacturers and distributors, and immunization advocates gathered late last month for the meeting.

It's a far different atmosphere than that of last year's summit. Many of those gathered then were still suffering the burns caused by the disastrous 2000-01 season -- characterized by delays and shortages -- and desperately trying to prevent those scenarios from ever playing out again. Now that the fires are out, these stakeholders are starting to look for ways to reach loftier goals.

Could flu vaccine delivery be one of the first health initiatives to eliminate ethnic and racial disparities? Could mass immunizations against the flu act as practice runs for the kinds of mass immunizations that would be necessary in the case of a bioterrorist attack?

The challenges related to any one of these concepts, though, are significant. Just meeting the Healthy People 2010 goals would require 90% of all people older than 65 and 60% of those 18 to 64 at high risk of complications to be vaccinated. [...]