Bush administration under fire for not preparing for flu epidemic

• For years, the government has failed to prepare adequately for an influenza pandemic and has no concrete plans for distributing scarce vaccine to people at high risk in such an emergency, a federal health care analyst said yesterday.
• Questioning the Bush administration's plans for dealing with a worldwide flu pandemic, Janet Heinrich, director of public health issues for the Government Accountability Office, said GAO advised federal officials four years ago of the need for a nationwide emergency vaccine distribution system.
• The federal government has depended on the states to develop emergency plans to buy and distribute vaccine during a global flu epidemic, Heinrich said.
• "Ahead of the storm, we should be making decisions about who purchases the vaccine, how it's distributed and who the target populations are," Heinrich said.
• Long before the current flu crisis left the United States with half of its expected 2004 vaccine after 48 million doses from the Chiron Corp. were contaminated at a plant in England, Heinrich predicted that a production problem could send flu prevention efforts into a tailspin.
• "I think it's very hard for this administration to make a decision as to whether they're going to use the public or private sector for selling or distributing the vaccine," Heinrich said yesterday.
• However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he couldn't comment on Heinrich's criticism.
• He said NIAID recently contracted with the United States' two flu vaccine providers to produce and test a vaccine based on a strain of avian, or bird, influenza, H5N1, which has the potential to cause a flu pandemic.
• Federal health officials were expected to deliver an update on plans for a pandemic last evening at a meeting at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
• "In the U.S. we tend to shy away from decisions about who gets to stand in line first," Schoch-Spana said.