[LINK] "$2-billion mass flu immunization program a bust, figures reveal"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Caroline Alphonso reports that Canada doesn't do epidemic-time mass vaccinations very well.

A $2-billion campaign to protect Canadians against an influenza pandemic failed dramatically in parts of Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta, newly obtained figures show, with one of the country’s top doctors acknowledging that public health officials neglected to properly organize a mass immunization program.

Just over a third of residents in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario were inoculated against H1N1, with a vaccination rate as low as one in four for residents of Hamilton, Ont., according to local health authorities. Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and the three territories, meanwhile, successfully inoculated more than half of their citizens. Newfoundland vaccinated about 70 per cent of its population.

Public health officials and medical experts, taking stock of the country’s response to the pandemic, point to three reasons for the low vaccination rates: a failure to communicate the risks of the pandemic and the safety of the adjuvant; sequencing guidelines that gave priority to high-risk groups and were not followed by some provinces, confusing the public; and Ottawa’s inability to fully inform provinces of the weekly vaccine supply, which stalled planning.

“The messaging was confusing, and the natural thing to do in a state of confusion is to go for the conservative option,” said Ross Upshur, director of the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics and a primary-care physician.

[. . .]

Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Arlene King, estimated that about 38 per cent of Ontarians were vaccinated, which is at the low end of rates among provinces and territories. She has called for a review of the provincial immunization program, similar to the one taking place in Alberta.

“We underestimated the logistics of organizing and delivering a mass campaign in extraordinarily tight time-frames across a vast province, in the glare of intense media coverage and in the face of fluctuating demand,” Dr. King said Wednesday in releasing her assessment of H1N1. “We underestimated lineups and demand surges.”