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Biosecurity Briefing
IOM Hosts Workshop on Strategies to Improve Medical Countermeasure Dispensing By Brooke Courtney, March 14, 2008 On March 3-4, 2008, the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events convened the “Workshop on Medical Countermeasures Dispensing.”1 The meeting was co-chaired by representatives from Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, and participants included local, state, and federal officials, private sector representatives, and non-profit organizations. The meeting focused largely on business sector involvement in and solutions for countermeasures distribution. The following were the main objectives of the workshop.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in a Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response (COTPER) background document, that proposed modalities for improving the nation’s ability to dispense countermeasures should focus on a non-medical model and include points of dispensing for medicines or vaccines, delivery of antibiotics to residences by postal carriers, pre-deployed community-based caches of pharmaceuticals, pre-event dispensing to first responders, and pre-event placement of pharmaceuticals in medical kits in individual households.2 According to the Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events one page overview, “[a]lthough much work has been done in this area… delivery of medical countermeasures has been identified as one of the major challenges facing the medical and public health community, [which] still does not have adequate resources or experience in the logistics of wide scale distribution.”3 The forum also reported that a “successful effort to develop actionable near-term options will require the engagement of a broader community including the private sector.”3 Workshop participants at the forum discussed strategies external to the traditional public health sector, such as leveraging employees and inventory tracking, distribution, drug repackaging and rotation, and refrigeration systems from business and not-for-profit sectors, to improve the efficiency of countermeasure delivery. Several participants also emphasized the need to focus on large-scale exercises and share innovations across jurisdictions. Additionally, workshop attendees and speakers discussed liability and security concerns associated with private sector involvement in dispensing efforts and expressed broad support for pre-positioning medicines, such as through the CDC’s MedKit program, which provides for placing sealed caches of antibiotics in individual households. Meeting organizers announced at the conclusion of the workshop that they would form a smaller group to move forward promising options discussed during the meeting. A workshop summary is expected to be published by fall 2008. Additional information about the workshop, including the agenda, an audio transcript, and presentations, is available on the IOM website. References
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