Fall 2006
Vol. 16, Number 3

Leaders of IDSA and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) have met with White House officials to offer input on preparing for pandemic influenza and other bioemergencies.

“We were delighted to have the opportunity to offer our input and our members’ expertise,” said IDSA President Martin J. Blaser, MD, FIDSA, who attended the Sept. 14 White House meeting. Also representing IDSA were Andrew T. Pavia, MD, who chairs the Society’s National and Global Public Health Committee, Jeffrey S. Duchin, MD, FIDSA, head of the Bioemergencies Work Group, and Edward N. Janoff, MD, who serves on IDSA’s Pandemic Influenza Task Force and takes the helm this fall as chair of IDSA’s Research Committee. SHEA was represented by Trish M. Perl, MD, MSc, the organization’s president.

The IDSA and SHEA representatives met with Rajeev Venkayya, MD, special assistant to the president for biodefense policy and other top members of the White House Homeland Security Council Biodefense Directorate. IDSA highlighted the need for detailed, evidence-based, standardized templates for state and local governments to use to conduct mass vaccinations and distribute countermeasures. IDSA recommended that state and local governments implement the templates (with federal support), test them during annual flu seasons, and report back to the federal government.

The Society also urged a pandemic vaccine research and development effort on the scale of the Apollo moon landing program. This effort should be open and transparent so all researchers in government, industry, and academia can access important information, IDSA said.

The meeting came at the request of the White House in response to comments IDSA and SHEA submitted in August on the White House flu plan. In addition to supporting a comprehensive vaccine policy, the comment letter had urged more and sustained funding for state, local, and global efforts. Although Congress has allocated significant resources for pandemic preparedness, most of the money has come in the form of one-time, emergency funding, and much of it has been offset by cuts in other federal bioterrorism and infectious diseases funding.

“State and local health departments, hospitals, and other institutions need to be able to sustain their efforts for the long term,” said Dr. Duchin “That means hiring and training staff, establishing surge capacity, integrating medical and public health systems, and doing a host of other things that require resources.”

Collaborations with CDC, GAO

In July, IDSA and SHEA provided comments to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding the use of surgical masks and respirators during an influenza pandemic. The groups were asked for input on a draft CDC document that reviewed the literature on influenza virus transmission, pathogenesis, and control, and outlined CDC’s recommendations on surgical mask and respirator use in health care and community settings.

IDSA members Henry M. Blumberg, MD, FIDSA, and Michael L. Tapper, MD, FIDSA, helped to prepare the groups’ comments, which pointed out the lack of consensus within the scientific community on the role of airborne transmission of the influenza virus. Although labor groups have urged CDC to advocate wider use of N95 respirators, most of the IDSA and SHEA experts who reviewed CDC’s draft felt that, based on existing science, surgical masks would be adequate for the majority of routine patient care activities.

Meanwhile, Dr. Duchin and IDSA member Kathleen F. Gensheimer, MD, FIDSA, are representing the Society in efforts to assist CDC to develop guidance for health departments and other institutions on the use of social distancing, school closure, quarantine, isolation, and related measures. These topics also will be addressed by the Institute of Medicine later this fall, and during a stakeholder meeting at CDC in December.

IDSA also provided input to GAO officials who are reviewing barriers at the state and local level to implementation of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) pandemic influenza plan released in November 2005. IDSA’s comments addressed health workforce surge capacity, as well as pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical countermeasures (e.g., antivirals, vaccines, and social distancing). Dr. Kathleen M. Neuzil, MD, chair of IDSA’s Pandemic Influenza Task Force, Dr. Gensheimer, and Leonard Mermel, DO, MSc, FIDSA, served as IDSA’s advisors to GAO.

In a related effort, IDSA and the Trust for America’s Health have developed an issue brief for policymakers and the media on the state of the science concerning pandemic influenza. The document, which is being publicly released in early October, will summarize for a lay audience the medical and scientific issues concerning vaccines, antivirals and immunotherapeutics, and diagnostics. The project is part of IDSA’s overall efforts to ensure that public policy decisions are based on science and to bring IDSA member experts’ perspectives to the table.

The IDSA/Trust for America’s Health issue brief is available on our homepage, www.idsociety.org. For more information on the Society’s efforts related to pandemic flu and bioemergencies, click on the links on our homepage in the green “Information About” box.