$100 Million for Anthrax vaccine

[Guest guest]

Government may waste anthrax vaccine By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated

Press Writer

Tue Oct 23, 3:45 PM ET

The government stands to waste $100 million a year if two federal

agencies cannot agree to coordinate the use of a vaccine for the

deadly anthrax bacterial disease.

The departments of Defense and Health and Human Services each

purchase the anthrax vaccine, BioThrax. But much of the vaccine

purchased for HHS goes unused, according to government investigators.

Currently the Strategic National Stockpile has more than 520,000

doses of the vaccine — worth $12 million — that have already expired,

according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by

The Associated Press before its release at a hearing Tuesday before

the Senate homeland security committee.

GAO said the two departments should create a single inventory system

for these drugs so they are not wasted. The Defense Department gives

BioThrax to personnel who will deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan and the

Korean peninsula, according to the report.

The national stockpile is kept in secret storage facilities around

the country. As of June, the stockpile had about 10 million doses of

the vaccine — all of which will expire if not used.

" It just seems like a common-sense solution to a problem that

otherwise is going to cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of

dollars, " Sen. , R-Maine, said Tuesday. is the

top Republican on the committee.

The departments say legal issues stand in the way of a vaccine-

sharing agreement, and say the GAO overestimated the amount of money

lost as a result.

Responding to the report, an HHS official said such an agreement

could save $25 million a year rather than $100 million. Another

obstacle to such an agreement is that the Pentagon does not use

nearly as many vaccines as HHS buys for its stockpile, said G.

Jarrett, the defense department's medical director at the office of

the special assistant for chemical and biological defense and

chemical demilitarization programs.

" It should also be noted that DoD cannot distribute expiring stocks

at the last minute, " Jarrett wrote in his response to the report.

In September and October 2001, anthrax exposures in the U.S. killed

five people and injured 22. The federal government accelerated its

program to develop more successful vaccines, but that program

continues to run into problems. Investigators have not determined who

is responsible for the attacks.

" This keeps me and a lot of other people up at night, " Sen. ph I.

Lieberman, I-Conn., said Tuesday. Lieberman chairs the Senate

committee and said this would be the first of many reports on anthrax

and bioterrorism. " The ease of bringing biological agents into the

country or actually procuring them here and then the propensity they

have to multiply and spread has devastating consequences. "

The vaccine's shelf life is currently three years, according to

manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions Inc. In September the company

signed a three-year contract with HHS to provide 18.75 million doses

of the anthrax vaccine for the national stockpile.

HHS plans to use the expired anthrax vaccines even though that goes

against Food and Drug Administration guidelines, according to the

report. But in its response to the report, HHS said it would destroy

the expired drugs.

(This version CORRECTS anthrax description by replacing virus with

bacterial disease.) )