We also saw new benefits from our partnership with state and local health officials. Thanks to your hard work, we were able to sign up three times as many health care providers to vaccinate people against the H1N1 flu as we had in our routine childhood vaccine network. That gave us the most robust distribution system ever put in place to deliver vaccines to target populations identified by our local partners. In particular, we made huge strides in reaching out to obstetricians to help protect pregnant women from H1N1. We need to build on these successes as we battle both seasonal flu and the next public health crisis.
As successful as these efforts were, we also know that many of you were doubling your efforts at the same time that budget cuts were slashing your resources. Thanks to your hard work and dedication, we ™ve still managed to respond quickly and effectively, but H1N1 confirmed that continuing to reduce our state and local public health infrastructure, is a formula for disaster.
Perhaps the biggest lesson we learned was about the limits of our vaccine technology. This fall, our efforts to rapidly produce vaccine and get it out to communities ran up against a hard fact: we were fighting the 2009 H1N1 flu with vaccine technology from the 1950s. We could hurry to develop a vaccine candidate, verify its safety, and clear production facilities, but there was nothing we could do to make the vaccine grow faster in eggs.
We worked to squeeze every last bit of efficiency and dependability out of a safe, but outdated technology. It was like an old car we had tuned up but still couldn ™t accelerate the way we needed it to. And the conclusion is clear: if we want to avoid these problems in the future, we needed to continue to make long-term investments in developing countermeasures that are safe and effective, but can be produced faster and more reliably.
That ™s why I ™ve asked Dr. Lurie and her office to lead a comprehensive review of our public health countermeasures enterprise that will be completed by the end of this quarter. We ™re going to look at how our policies affect every step of countermeasure development and production from the laboratory to the distribution point, and ask: how can we do better? And then we ™re going to take those answers and put them into action.
The ultimate goal of this review is to have a modernized countermeasure production process where we have more promising discoveries, more advanced development, more robust manufacturing, better stockpiling, and more advanced distribution practices. In other words, we want to create a system that can respond to any threat as quickly as possible. The kind of system that is so dependable and comprehensive that it deters potential bioterrorism attacks and makes our enemies say, It ™s not worth the effort. And when it comes to the next pandemic from Mother Nature, we want to be able to develop, produce, and deliver a vaccine within weeks ”not months.
As part of this review, we need to hear from you. Your input and partnership have been incredibly important at every step of our H1N1 response. Now, we want to know what insights you have when you look back. What worked well? What can we do better? What are some of the innovative approaches you used to respond effectively to H1N1 in your communities that you think could work in the rest of the country?
This review is not just about flu. The partnerships we ™ve built and the lessons we ™ve learned in the last ten months will be useful in any public health emergency, whether it ™s a naturally occurring pandemic, an outbreak from contaminated meat, or an anthrax attack. One of our major goals as a department is to always be guided by the best science possible. And that means we need to be constantly studying our response, identifying key lessons, and incorporating these new findings into our plans.
In a few months, the seemingly endless 2009-2010 flu season will come to a close. And I can imagine how much you all want to get back to your regular work. We know that public health is a full-time job. As we meet today, viruses are mutating. Terrorists may be planning. Many of you will face new natural disasters in your communities in 2010. The threats we face are always evolving, so our defenses must evolve, too. There is an old saying in sports that most victories are won on the practice field. That ™s also true in public health. No amount of hard work at the height of an emergency can make up for months of inadequate planning. Shortcuts in preparation quickly lead to shortfalls in results when a crisis hits.
That ™s why we ask ourselves every day: how can we make our public health defense even stronger? It ™s also why I ™m so grateful for all the incredible work that you ™ve continued to do, at a time when many of you are being asked to do more with fewer resources. Today, I can pledge to you that this administration and this department will continue to do everything we can to support our state and local public health partners and to strengthen those partnerships to minimize gaps or overlaps.
We can ™t predict when or how the next public health emergency will hit. But by building on the success of our H1N1 response and applying the lessons we learned, we can be even more prepared next time. So thank you for inviting me here today. Thank you for your partnership. And I look forward to working with in the months to come to keep Americans safe and healthy.
Source U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services