[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 73 (Friday, June 9, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H3708-H3709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Colleagues, I have tremendous concern about the lack of 
preparedness in our Nation for the potential of a flu pandemic. Now, it 
is not certain that the current H5N1 bird flu is going to become a 
human-to-human type pandemic, but all the experts say we are overdue 
for a pandemic in the United States so it is prudent that we look at 
our preparedness or lack thereof.
  Recently, in the Homeland Security Committee on which I serve, as 
does the gentleman in the chair, we held a hearing called ``Are We 
Ready: Implementing The National Strategy For Pandemic Influenza.'' 
There were a number of disturbing things that came out during that 
hearing, and one in particular has been highlighted a number of times 
by GAO reports and recently by press reports. I asked some questions 
regarding that during the hearing, and that is the lack of ventilators 
in the United States.
  Basically, experts say that medical professionals will be triaging 
ventilators because we have such a severe shortage of ventilators in 
this country. It is the one way to help take someone through an acute 
phase of the H5N1 virus. The very few survivors that are known have 
been on ventilators and received intensive antiviral drugs and others. 
So were this to be a pandemic, as opposed to a few isolated cases, we 
are woefully short.
  In fact, the estimates are that we would be 637,500 ventilators 
short. That is, people would be dying unnecessarily because they 
wouldn't be able to get near a ventilator, and that number assumes that 
none of the existing ventilators are being used for any other purpose 
in the United States.

[[Page H3709]]

  Now, when I raised this issue with Dr. John Agwunobi, who is the 
Assistant Secretary For Health, he is a recent Bush appointee, his 
expertise was being Health and Human Services Director for President 
Bush's brother in Florida, so he brings tremendous expertise to this 
job and great professionalism, as do many of the political appointees 
we have seen with this administration, but when I asked Dr. Agwunobi 
about the ventilator shortage, he said, well, that is not our job.
  I said, well, what about the national stockpile? He said, oh, yeah, 
we'll get some for the national stockpile. How many? Oh, well, 4,000 or 
5,000 ventilators. Remember, we need another 640,000 or so in the case 
of a pandemic.
  So I said, well, whose duty do you think it is to enhance the 
stockpile? How are we going to enhance the stockpile? He says, oh, no, 
that is the job of the States and the hospitals. He said, in fact, you 
know, hospitals or some county somewhere might not build a swimming 
pool; instead, they should be investigating in preparedness for 
pandemics.
  Well, he doesn't live in the world that most of us live in. My 
counties are pretty short of money for essentials. They are not out 
building swimming pools. We don't have public hospitals in my State. 
The other hospitals that are there can't get reimbursed. You can't work 
it into a Medicare reimbursement schedule to buy a bunch of ventilators 
to stockpile for a pandemic. They have to justify the current clientele 
needing the ventilators, otherwise they are not allowed to put that 
into their rate base.
  So I raised these issues with Dr. Agwunobi, and he just basically 
blew it off. He is really not too concerned. Now, this is the Assistant 
Secretary For Health, political appointee of George Bush. He started to 
kind of remind me of another famous appointee, Michael Brown. But this 
time it is before the fact. We need action to prepare for a pandemic.
  I am writing to the Appropriations Committee recommending that they 
deal with this in the Labor-HHS-Education appropriation bill; that we 
mandate some purchases for the national stockpile, minimally of 
ventilators. We should also be doing a much better job of stockpiling 
the antivirals; and we should also be, with more urgency, instead of 
waiting for the private sector or the pharmaceutical companies, who 
aren't much interested in vaccines or other things they can't make a 
bunch of money on, to give us some new installed capacity in this 
country, modern capacity, to develop vaccines. I mean, this pandemic 
will come in waves. And between the waves, if it goes on for 6 months 
or a year, you could develop and deploy vaccines once the specifics are 
known. Unfortunately, there are no modern facilities in the United 
States of America capable of manufacturing vaccines.
  But, again, Dr. Agwunobi and the Bush appointees don't look at this 
as a particular problem. We need to better prepare to protect the 
American people for the possibility of a flu pandemic.

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