The Obama administration announced that it plans to invest nearly $2 billion in measures to beef up the nation’s ability to respond to bioterrorism and pandemic threats, including $822 million for pandemic influenza vaccine development.
“Our nation must have a system that is nimble and flexible enough to produce medical countermeasures quickly in the face of any attack or threat, whether it’s a threat we know about today or a new one,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a press release.
The announcement came Thursday, in conjunction with the release of a federal review that Sebelius ordered following problems with producing the 2009 H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine. In a December 2009 speech before members of the American Medical Association, Sebelius said that President Obama supported her call for a review of the “entire medical countermeasures enterprise.”
Medical countermeasures include vaccines, antivirals, antibiotics, diagnostics, and medical equipment.
The report looked at “the federal government’s system to produce medications, vaccines, equipment and supplies needed for a health emergency, known as medical countermeasures,” according to the release from HHS. It highlighted the need for the country to be quickly able to produce medical countermeasures in the wake of threats that could threaten the health of the nation, including pandemic flu and bioterrorism.
The report found that the nation’s ability to respond to medical threats is lacking and could be improved by: enhancing regulatory innovation; providing core development and manufacturing services to innovators and medical countermeasure developers; expanding manufacturing capacity to be able to respond to a sudden threat; and creating novel ways for academia and industry to work together.
Sebelius — along with other top government health officials including FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD; Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Thomas Frieden, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — laid out the government blueprint at a Thursday press conference.
The plan the government officials outlined would provide:
•$170 million to improve FDA regulation of the drug development process
•$678 million for the development of new “countermeasure” manufacturing facilities
•$33 million for accelerated pharmaceutical development at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
•$200 million to create a government-sponsored investment firm to help foster innovation in the drug industry