ANNAPOLIS – After an unexpected vaccine shortage kicked off a tumultuous, ongoing flu season, some Maryland lawmakers want to ensure the state is more prepared in the future.
The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bill to extend the Statewide Commission on Immunizations, a three-year-old, Baltimore-based commission that primarily examines the distribution of influenza and other vaccines.
The volunteer commission may also decide which immunizations to require for schoolchildren and may educate the public about vaccine shortages.
The current flu season has challenged the commission and the public, with both a shortage and then surplus of flu vaccines, and a double-whammy of respiratory and stomach viruses that have crowded hospitals.
Delegate James Hubbard, D-Prince George’s, who sponsored the bill that established the commission in 2002, also has sponsored this year’s measure to extend it beyond its May 31 expiration.
The House Health and Government Operations Committee voted unanimously Friday to limit the commission’s extension to another three years.
Lawmakers must continue the commission, Hubbard said, because of the current flu season’s impact.
In fall 2004, British regulators shut down a leading vaccine producer because of contamination, causing a shortage in the United States. Marylanders followed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and reserved flu vaccines for only the most needy patients.
But by January, when hospitals were turning away patients because of high flu activity, the state had accumulated a vaccine surplus.
The commission must work ahead to prevent future flu vaccine supply problems, Hubbard said, and ensure that all vaccines are distributed evenly to the people who need them.
“We’ll see what they can do to make supply versus demand early on a much easier process,” said Hubbard, chairman of the House health committee’s public health subcommittee. “We’ve got a ton of problems to deal with.”
Richard Alcorta, Maryland’s emergency medical services director, said the typical flu virus — a respiratory influenza — has actually been milder than normal this season. But an unusually widespread gastrointestinal virus has stuffed hospitals with sick patients.
The commission could not have predicted nor prevented this chaotic season, Alcorta said.
It will be charged with helping Marylanders adjust to such a season in the future, though.
Greg Reed, the commission’s staffer for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said addressing vaccine shortages and studying a current controversy over mercury levels in vaccines will be two of its top priorities.
Many researchers, including Rockville geneticist Mark Geier, attribute a surge in brain-development disorders like autism to high levels of mercury in vaccines given to small children.
Reed said the commission meets about once every quarter and costs the state very little, probably less than $1,000 annually. There are 13 volunteer doctors on the commission.
“It’s nice to have an independent entity that’s capable of providing factual information and opinions,” Reed said, “regarding some of the problems and challenges that we’re facing.”
The commission is already studying next season’s flu vaccination supply because companies start working on producing the vaccines months in advance.
“That’s the reason we need to keep {the commission) around,” said House health committee Chairman John Adams Hurson, D-Montgomery. “We need to have a better handle on how you make vaccines… I think that’s why the bill’s going to pass.” -30- CNS-02-22-05