Tina Tan, MD, FIDSA, FPIDS, FAAP, Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) president discusses the changes and offers a glimpse of what the US can expect in terms of limited access to new vaccines, increased incidence rates of disease, and new public health policy regarding immunizations.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And since Robert Kennedy Jr has taken over as HHS Secretary, he has instructed the CDC to no longer publish a public awareness campaign about influenza vaccines,1 and also postponed the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting that was supposed to happen this week. This meeting happens 3 times a year and it is a significant meeting where independent medical advisors discuss scientific data around vaccines. No date has been provided for a rescheduled meeting.
“Vaccines are one of the greatest developments that we've ever had, and it really is a major tool in our ability to control very serious vaccine preventable diseases,” said Tina Tan, MD, IDSA president and professor of Pediatrics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. “So with the removal of public health vaccine information, as well as with the postponement of the ACIP meeting…it will drive the American public to anti-vaccine sites to get their information, and that is a major, major problem.”
Last week, Tan made an official IDSA statement that discussed these ongoing policy changes. In her statement, she wrote, “Weakening our nation’s vaccine infrastructure will lead to significantly lower immunization rates and result in many more outbreaks of serious, preventable hospitalizations and deaths.”
To read the statement, go
Although the dismissal of the flu vaccination public awareness campaign being halted is disturbing, the postponing of the ACIP meeting without a future date planned can effectively prevent future vaccines from being utilized.
“If the committee is not able to meet and discuss the evidence for the use of these vaccines, then these vaccines cannot be recommended and cannot be used…the FDA can approve a vaccine, but they don't make the recommendations for the use of the vaccines to the American public. It really is the CDC ACIP that comes out with those recommendations, and all this is based on very scientifically sound data,” Tan said.
