Federal Vaccine Program Rides to Rescue

The federal Vaccines for Children (VFC) program helped corral a meningococcal outbreak in Oklahoma in 2010, state public health officials wrote in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

When several elementary school students came down with meningococcal infections, including two fatalities, health officials sought to vaccinate or give antibiotics to their classmates and others with whom they might have been in contact - a total of more than 2,500 people.

State funds were available to buy vaccines for only 25% of the people that officials hoped to vaccinate. The Vaccines for Children program came through for most of the rest - more than 1,000 of the nearly 1,500 doses eventually given.

Children on Medicaid, those with no insurance, or those with insurance that doesn’t cover such vaccinations are eligible for vaccines in the program.

The take-home message, according to the report: “Use of VFC funds can bolster vaccination coverage among eligible children in an outbreak setting.”

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By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today