Shedding light on the smallpox vaccine

Finally news from the smallpox vaccination front. As you may have heard, last Thursday (6/20) the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices unanimously rejected the proposal to offer smallpox vaccine to every American. Instead the panel recommended the vaccination of special response teams who would be the first responders to any bioterrorist attack of smallpox. Under the recommendations, a response team would be designated for each state and approximately 15,000 to 20,000 team members would be vaccinated nationwide.

These recommendations will now be sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. A spokesman for the CDC said that in the past the recommendations from this panel have been accepted. The Secretary of HHS, Tommy Thompson, said he will review the recommendation as quickly as possible “so that we have a policy in place as more vaccine becomes available later this year.”

We’ll continue to monitor this story and will keep you up to date as further developments are announced. And watch the forum at www.hsionline.com to get the latest insights from your fellow members.

In the meantime it’s important to remember that the vaccinia virus vaccination that will be used is highly contagious. The vaccination creates a lesion that must be treated very carefully. If poorly cared for, the lesion can spread the virus to other areas of the body or to another person. But we’ll address these concerns and others as we get closer to the time when vaccinations begin to be administered.

Jenny Thompson

Health Sciences Institute

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