Posted on 12/20/2002 3:09:51 PM PST by blam
US public ill-informed about smallpox dangers
December 20 2002 at 06:46AM
Boston - Americans are so ill-informed about smallpox that a majority believe the deadly disease still breaks out naturally throughout the world and can be cured, a Harvard University survey found.
The last case of smallpox was 25 years ago. And while halting the natural spread of the disease was one of the greatest public health victories in history, there is no cure yet.
Misconceptions like these suggest a deep public misunderstanding of smallpox, despite many months of news reports and discussion about the possibility of a bioterrorist release of the virus.
"It's staggering," said Robert Blendon, who directed the survey at the Harvard School of Public Health.
'We show there would be a net benefit to vaccinating health workers' Like several other recent surveys, this one found that about 60 percent of Americans say they would like to be vaccinated, though that willingness would plummet if people found their own doctors avoided the vaccine.
The survey will be published in the January 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, along with several other reports on smallpox.
The journal posted all the smallpox papers on its website.
The United States smallpox vaccination programme was halted three decades ago but is due to resume in January next year because of the risk of terrorists re-introducing the disease. Viruses that were stockpiled after the person-to-person spread was eliminated will be used.
The vaccine will be mandatory for about 500 000 US military personnel and recommended for another half a million people who work in emergency rooms and as part of special smallpox response teams.
Smallpox could be spread by terrorists The government will make the vaccine available to anyone else who wants it, though it will not encourage ordinary people to get the shots.
The government's policy of targeting doctors and nurses is supported by a detailed analysis in the journal, sponsored by the Centre for Domestic and International Health Security, that examines various scenarios of smallpox release.
"We show there would be a net benefit to vaccinating health workers, even if there is a low probability of an attack, because health workers are at greatly increased risk," said the study's director, Dr Samuel Bozzette of the San Diego Healthcare System.
Blendon's survey was based on calls to 1 006 randomly selected adults over the past two months. It carried a sampling error of about three percent.
The findings show:
About 30 percent believe there has been a smallpox case in the US in the past five years, and 63 percent think there has been one somewhere in the world.
The last US case was in 1949 and the last in the world was in 1977.
Almost 25 percent said it was likely they would die from the vaccine. The actual death rate from the shots is estimated to be less than three per million.
A staggering 78 percent said they thought medical treatment for smallpox would prevent death or serious illness. There is no proven treatment after symptoms start.
A total of 58 percent do not believe that vaccination within a few days of exposure will prevent people from contracting smallpox. Actually, it will.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have largely focused on educating doctors about smallpox, assuming they will then communicate with patients.
"If and when a vaccine is made available to the general public, the plan here is to embark on a mass-media education campaign that could include posters, advertisements and public service announcements," said spokesperson for the centres, Tom Skinner.
The possibility of rare but potentially serious side effects remains the main drawback of widespread smallpox vaccination. The Bush administration estimates that one to two people per million would die from the shots.
After reviewing about 14 000 medical articles going back 100 years, Buzzette's team chose a somewhat higher estimate of two deaths per million.
If 60 percent of the 290 million Americans were vaccinated, that would mean nearly 500 deaths, even if smallpox never re-appears. However, in any outbreak, health care workers are the ones most likely to catch the virus. They make up three percent of the population but would account for 20 percent to 60 percent of all smallpox cases, depending on which scenario of disease spread is used.
Smallpox could be spread by terrorists in various ways. One scenario would be to let three smallpox-infected terrorists ride mass transit in a large city. The researchers estimated that fewer than 20 people would die before the disease was contained through a vaccination campaign.
The worst scenario imagined was turning 40 terrorists loose on a busy day in 10 large airports with portable nebulisers spraying smallpox into the air. Unless most of the population had already been vaccinated, between about 40 000 and 55 000 people would die. - Sapa-AP
There weren't as many trial lawyers back then.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.