美国政府出台天花接种计划（英文）

Mednews

Officials Outline Smallpox Vaccination Options

华盛顿-负责公众健康的官员十月四日说: 现在正在考虑一个接种牛痘的计划，此计划将要求优先在500,000至10,000,000卫生保健及应急反应人员中接种.

WASHINGTON-Some smallpox vaccination plans currently under consideration would call for vaccinating between 500,000 and 10 million healthcare workers and emergency first-responders prior to a smallpox outbreak, public health officials said Oct. 4.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters that several options for pre-event vaccination are being considered by officials within the Department of Health and Human Services. However, she noted that no decision has been made by the President about whether there will be any pre-event vaccination.

Under the options outlined by Dr. Gerberding, as many as 500,000 people could be vaccinated as part of a plan to vaccinate the teams of scientists and healthcare professionals that would be involved in investigating and responding to a smallpox outbreak; as well as healthcare workers and other hospital personnel that would be at greatest risk of contracting the disease from patients if there was an outbreak.

That group could expand to 10 million people if the government chose to also vaccinate an expanded number of healthcare personnel around the country, and so-called first responders like police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and hazmat personnel.

"If we have a smallpox attack, the whole response community would be engaged in one way or another and enhacing their readiness would [put] us one step ahead of the game," Dr. Gerberding said.

Dr. Gerberding added that one of the options also under consideration is making the vaccination available to the general public at a later point. She said one scenario would be to allow vaccinations of the general public once responders had been vaccinated and a vaccine had been licensed.

These options differ from the recommendations that CDC received from its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in June. That group suggested that the government vaccinate between 10,000 to 20,000 predesignated state and local responders and certain hospital personnel.

Dr. Gerberding said that since the ACIP made those recommendations the thinking by public health officials has evolved. In particular, officials have moved away from the idea of designating specific hospitals to receive smallpox patients.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said that sufficient amounts of a licensed smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the entire population could be available in late 2003 or early 2004. Although sufficient amounts of the vaccine are available now to provide for mass vaccination if an attack occurred, there is not currently a licensed vaccine available.

Officials said there is general agreement that mass vaccination of the public would be much easier logistically with a licensed vaccine.

2002.10.08