WASHINGTON – In the event of a flu pandemic or a bioterrorism attack, help could arrive via the U.S. mail or from the fire station down the street, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt (search) said Tuesday.
Leavitt, in an hour-long interview with Associated Press reporters and editors, said it's clear that the system of delivering medicines in the United States is inadequate in the event of an emergency.
He said it was "in some ways an absolute certainty" that a flu pandemic would occur. "If it happens anywhere, there is risk everywhere," he said.
The federal government is particularly concerned about bird flu (search), which since 1994 has sickened 109 people, 55 of whom have died, because people lack immunity to the virus.
Leavitt said the federal government was looking to stockpile 20 million doses of a bird flu vaccine and another 20 million doses of Tamiflu, an antiviral medication to treat the disease.
The vaccine, in human clinical trials, has created an immune response in those who had taken it, he said. Still to be determined, he said, is how much is necessary to produce a sufficient response.
Leavitt said the government's goal is to have the medicine delivered within 12 hours of decision to deploy the medicine, but that exercises have revealed flaws in the delivery system.
"We're finding that the distributions systems are not adequate to put medicines in the hands of people fast enough, so we're beginning to look at alternative ways to speed that up," Leavitt said.
"We're looking at having more points of distribution, for example. We're experimenting with having the postal service being able to deliver them, because they walk those routes every day."
He said other possibilities included using firehouses as distribution points.
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