Via CIDRAP, Lisa Schnirring write the third in an important series: H1N1 LESSONS LEARNED: Vaccination campaign weathered rough road, paid dividends. Excerpt:
As the biggest public health initiative in the history of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the H1N1 pandemic vaccination campaign encountered stiff headwinds with scarce supplies and complex messaging but ended up reaching about a quarter of the US population and, some say, smoothing the path for future immunization efforts.
About a month after the pandemic flu virus emerged, federal officials ordered vaccines from five different companies at a price tag of $650 million, with $287 million more for adjuvants that could be needed if the virus turned out to be severe or if vaccine potency was lower than expected.
While manufacturers struggled with a low-yielding seed strain, public health experts were anxious about the next daunting step: getting the vaccine into people's arms.
Their task was to launch the first mass vaccination campaign since the much-maligned swine flu vaccine of 1976, against steady undercurrents of antivaccine sentiment and general mistrust of government.
