[NVIC] President Declares Emergency on Flu Funds

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NVIC Note:

Following is a letter President Bush sent to the Speaker, U.S. House of

Representatives today, declaring an " emergency " in seeking congressional

approval for $7.1 billion to respond to a " threat of avian and pandemic

influenza. " His declaration comes at a time when the U.S. House of

Representatives will be considering the Burr bill (S. 1873) which comes up

for a vote shortly in the Senate and removes all liabililty for vaccine

injuries and deaths from pharmaceutical companies which develop vaccines for

use in " natural outbreaks " of disease as well as bioterrorism events. The

legislation will also allow the vaccine makers and government agencies to

keep secret the way the vaccines are made or whether the vaccines are

killing or injuring people. For more information, go to www.nvic.org.

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

November 1, 2005

Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of

Representatives

Dear Mr. Speaker:

Today, I outlined a strategy to address the threat of avian and pandemic

influenza. This strategy is designed to meet three critical goals: to detect

and contain outbreaks before they spread across the world, to protect the

American people by stockpiling vaccines and antiviral drugs and accelerating

the development of new vaccine technologies, and to ensure that Federal,

State, and local communities are prepared for potential domestic outbreaks.

To provide the necessary resources to immediately begin the implementation

of this strategy, I ask the Congress to consider the enclosed requests,

totaling $7.1 billion, for the Departments of Health and Human Services,

Agriculture, Defense, Homeland Security, the Interior, State, and Veterans

Affairs, as well as for International Assistance Programs.

I hereby designate the proposals in the amount requested herein as emergency

requirements, and I urge the Congress to act expeditiously on this request

to ensure the country is prepared for this growing danger.

The details of this request are set forth in the enclosed letter from the

Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/11/01/nati

onal/w073020S91.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle

Bush Seeks $1.2B for U.S. Flu Vaccines

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the

danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile

enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of

bird flu.

The president also said the United States must approve liability protection

for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. He said the number of American

vaccine manufacturers has plummeted because the industry has been hit with a

flood of lawsuits.

Bush said no one knows when or where a deadly strain of flu will strike but

" at some point we are likely to face another pandemic. "

The president, in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, said the

United States must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world,

stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs and be ready to respond at the

federal, state and local levels in the event a pandemic reaches the United

States.

Bush outlined a strategy that would cost $7.1 billion including:

_$1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against

the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans;

_$1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of

the flu symptoms;

_$2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a

process that now takes months;

_$583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to

respond to an outbreak.

Bush said a pandemic flu would be far more serious than the seasonal flu

that makes hundreds of thousands of people sick ever year and sends people

to their doctors for a flu shot. " I had mine, " Bush said. Unlike seasonal

flu, pandemic flu can kill people who are young and healthy as well as those

who are frail and sick, he said.

In asking Congress for money to buy vaccine, Bush said the vaccine " would

not be a perfect match to the pandemic flu because the pandemic strain would

probably differ somewhat from the avian flu virus it grew from. But a

vaccine against the current avian flu virus would likely offer some

protection against a pandemic strain and possibly save many lives in the

first critical months of an outbreak. "

He also said the United States was increasing stockpiles of antiviral drugs,

such as Tamiflu and Relenza. Such drugs cannot prevent people from catching

the flu, but they can reduce the severity of the illness when taken within

48 hours of getting sick, he said.

" At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the

world, but if history is our guide there's reason to be concerned, " Bush

said. " In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three

influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them. "

He pointed out that the 1918 pandemic killed over a half million Americans

and more than 20 million people across the globe. " One-third of the U.S.

population was infected, and life expectancy in our country was reduced by

13 years.

" The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed

tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world, " Bush said.

Bird flu has been documented in Asia and has spread to Europe but has not

reached the United States, the president said. " Our country has been given

fair warning of this danger to our homeland and time to prepare, " he said.

Bush said the cornerstone of his strategy was to develop new technologies to

produce new vaccines quickly. " If a pandemic strikes, our country must have

a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine online

quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the

pandemic strain, " Bush said.

The principal goal of Bush's plan, Health and Human Services Secretary

Leavitt said, " is the capacity for every American to have a vaccine

in the case of a pandemic, no matter what the virus is. "

" There is no reason to believe that in the next day or two or week or month

that that's going to occur, " Leavitt said on CBS's " The Early Show. " But he

added that " we do need to be ready in case it begins to mutate into a human

transmissable disease. "

Pandemics strike when the easy-to-mutate influenza virus shifts to a strain

that people have never experienced before, something that has happened three

times in the last century. While it is impossible to say when the next

super-flu will strike, concern is growing that the bird flu strain known as

H5N1 could trigger one if it mutates to start spreading easily among people.

Since 2003, at least 62 people in Southeast Asia have died from H5N1; most

regularly handled poultry.

The nation's strategy starts with attempting to spot an outbreak abroad

early and working to contain it before it reaches the United States.

Today, most of the world's vaccine against regular winter flu, including

much of that used by Americans each flu season, is manufactured in factories

in Britain and Europe.

The government already has ordered $162.5 million worth of vaccine to be

made and stockpiled against the Asian bird flu, more than half to be made in

a U.S. factory.

But the administration plan, to be released in more detail on Wednesday,

calls for more than stockpiling shots. It will stress a new method of

manufacturing flu vaccines - growing the virus to make them in

easy-to-handle cell cultures instead of today's cumbersome process that uses

millions of chicken eggs - as well as incentives for new U.S.-based vaccine

factories to open.

Such steps will take several years to implement, but the hope is that

eventually they could allow production of enough vaccine to go around within

six months of a pandemic's start.

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