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Smallpox Policy AnnouncementGood afternoon Thank you Governor Ridge. I thank you for your continued friendship, and I am personally glad that you have agreed to stay on and accept an appointment as Secretary of Homeland Security. I want to thank President Bush for the time and thoughtfulness that he put into this decision. This was not an easy decision. It was not easy because it deals with human life - how best to protect it and what risks are we as a nation willing to take to protect it. No matter what decision was made, there was the risk of someone getting hurt. This fact cannot and should not be lost on anyone. The President's decision strikes the right balance. This decision best prepares us to protect the American people in an emergency, while minimizing any harm to the public from a vaccine that has side effects. The President's plan strengthens our preparedness by working with state and local governments to create smallpox response teams. These teams will consist of public health and health care workers, and states are deciding who should be on these teams with guidance from HHS and CDC. Then, we will progress into our first responders -- our police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and other health care workers. We are recommending that people in these groups get the vaccine, but participation is voluntary. Thus, we fully recognize that not everyone will choose to participate. This program centers on smallpox response teams and first responders for a very strategic reason. Since a smallpox release is possible, we must prepare by offering vaccine to those most likely to respond. By preparing our emergency responders, we are then better able to protect the American people in an emergency….and that is our highest priority. We are already working with states on setting up the logistics for identifying and vaccinating our smallpox response teams and first responders. Dr. Gerberding will get into more specific detail in a moment. We expect the states to begin vaccinating in late January and work through the smallpox response teams as soon as they can. We understand some states will take longer than others. While emergency responders are our priority, there is another component to this decision that recognizes some people not on emergency response teams will insist on being vaccinated. Let me be clear. We do not recommend that the general public get vaccinated at this time. But we will develop an orderly process to make vaccine available to those adult members of the general public without contraindications who insist on being vaccinated either in 2003, with unlicensed vaccine, or in 2004, with a licensed vaccine. We expect to develop this process by sometime next spring or summer. Again, I emphasize, the federal government is not recommending vaccination for the general public at this time. The fundamental purpose of this vaccination program is to prepare those emergency responders who will respond to an outbreak. This prepares us to protect all Americans in an emergency. Therefore, the immediate task and priority for the federal, state and local government will be implementation of the program to vaccinate emergency responders. Also keep in mind, the program we are announcing today is pre-event. If there were a release of smallpox, we would immediately make vaccine available to the public. We have enough vaccine to cover every American in an emergency … and we have state plans to implement a mass vaccination program. This vaccine, however, would be unlicensed. Now, I know we're asking our states, cities and hospitals to step up and perform a great deal to make this plan a success. But, we do so in the name of protecting our country. By working together, we're going to better protect our citizens from harm if a terrorist were to release smallpox into our population. Protecting our citizens from this deadly disease is definitely worth the effort and energy we are asking for today from our states and cities, the public health community and the emergency response community. Let me thank in advance, the public health workers, the hospital employees, the emergency responders and employers who will help make this program work. You've obviously chosen your professions because you want to care for people at their most dire moment, and you're willing to take the risks that come with providing such urgent care. Your compassion and patriotism is appreciated by all Americans. As we implement this program, there's no doubt we're going to experience bumps along the way. We've prepared well. But it's been quite a while since this nation saw the need for vaccinating so many people in such a limited amount of time. And it's been a while since we've had to give the smallpox vaccine. So obviously, we're going to encounter some challenges. When we encounter bumps in the road, we must work together to smooth them out and find solutions. One thing we are going to do is a great deal of education. We've already been educating those in public health, medicine, science and emergency response throughout the summer and fall. We're going to keep doing that. We're also going to educate all those faced with the decision of getting the vaccine. In fact, we want all our citizens to be educated about smallpox and the vaccine. People can learn more by going to the CDC website -- www.cdc.gov -- or the HHS site -- www.smallpox.gov. Both sites feature sets of easy-to-find and easy-to-understand documents about the disease, the vaccine, the risks and other important facts about this issue. The sites also includes all the technical and scientific information that clinicians and public health experts need to do their jobs. The smallpox.gov site compiles an array of information from all the HHS agencies -- including CDC, NIH and FDA -- as well as materials from experts outside of HHS. The bottom line is that this vaccination program calls for a public health partnership like no other we've seen for some time in this country. We're going to need to work together -- federal, state and local government as well as the private health care system. If we succeed in this partnership, we will strengthen a public health infrastructure that will serve Americans well, not just for bioterrorism but in our other daily heatlh care needs. Now I would like to introduce Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who will speak to the next steps that CDC will take in implementing this program. She will be followed by Dr. Tony Fauci, who will speak about the vaccine. Our final briefer will be Dr. William Winkenwerder, who will speak to the military aspect of this decision. Last Revised: December 13, 2002 |
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