Published: November 04, 2009 07:45 pm      

Our Readers Speak, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009

Vaccine process could be better organized



On Oct. 24 the Raleigh County Health Department administered the H1N1 vaccine to the public. I am glad to see such a large segment of the population of Raleigh County concerned about this public health threat.

I was born and raised in a third world country and am quite familiar with mass vaccination programs but this was my first experience in the United States.

Considering the United States has the most developed health care system in the world, I was expecting the experience to be quite different from my childhood recollections. However, that was not the case.

In my opinion, the entire process could have been better organized.

The line was more than a half mile long during the time that I was there.

I arrived almost an hour before the scheduled time and still waited almost 4 hours for my children to be vaccinated.

We were packed into the lines and facilities like “sardines in a can” with no accommodations for restrooms or drinking water for the majority of the time.

The weather was cold and raining and the population waiting to be vaccinated was mostly children who are by their nature are ill prepared to stand and wait in line for any length of time.

In any large gathering such as this there is an increased risk of exposure to the very flu-like illness the vaccine is designed to prevent.

The preferred option for vaccinating individuals is the primary care clinics and doctor's offices who traditionally have been the front line for vaccinating against flu and other diseases.

The vaccination effort could also have been effectively done within the public school system like many of the other counties in West Virginia are implementing for the H1N1 outbreak.

If the school option was not available then the immunization effort could have been more effectively implemented with an increased number of staff to administer the shots to the individuals.

By increasing the number of staff members and providing shelter such as tents to use as nursing stations, the number of individuals who could have been vaccinated in a short amount of time would have been substantially increased.

If this is an example of the “public option” for our health care system then God have mercy on us because we will all be standing in line for hours in the cold and rain to get basic health care. As with any government controlled operation, common sense was in short supply.

But you can still find it in the private sector in stockpiles.



Hassan A. Jafary, MD

Beckley