One-third of countries engaged in pandemic influenza planning
have not prioritized who should get vaccinations and antiviral
medications, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev, Israel. The study authors performed the largest
pandemic-plan review to date, a targeted review of 45 national
pandemic influenza plans from developed and developing
countries. The study is published in the October issue of the
journal "Because of costs and the time delay of manufacturing
strain-specific vaccines, critical medical resources are likely
to be scarce in a pandemic and will require rationing," said
Lori Uscher-Pines, lead author of the study and a doctoral
candidate in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy
and Management. "However, we learned that individual countries
have not consistently prioritized population groups for vaccines
and antivirals. No countries prioritized population groups to
receive ventilators, face masks