WASHINGTON — More than two dozen states have failed to stock enough of the emergency supplies of antiviral medications considered necessary to treat victims of swine flu should the flu become a full-blown crisis, according to federal records.
The medications are part of a national effort to be prepared for a pandemic, and the stockpiling program is being tested for the first time by the rapid spread of the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus. If a health crisis wiped out drug supplies in pharmacies and hospitals, or if families were unable to get to their doctors, local and state officials could quickly distribute the stockpiled medications.
The Strategic National Stockpile, created during the Clinton administration a decade ago to provide a federally coordinated response to disasters, maintains a massive collection of antibiotics, vaccines, gas masks and other supplies in a dozen secret locations.
The program was expanded in 2004 to include drugs needed in a pandemic and is designed to link with stockpiles maintained by state governments, pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies.
But the District, Maryland and 26 other states are 10 million dosages short of the levels that the federal government has determined they should have in their stockpiles for a pandemic.
The drugs – in this case, Tamiflu and Relenza – would be used to treat the illness, not to prevent it.
More than $6 billion has been invested in the efforts to fight a pandemic, and President Obama this week asked for an additional $1.5 billion from Congress.
The Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday it will purchase an additional 13 million treatment courses.
Along with the federal doses, the plan called for states together to create a cache of 30 million doses, but they have fallen short of that figure by one-third.
Maine, for example, which has five suspected cases of swine flu, has stockpiled no medications.
"There is no excuse for this. They were given guidelines and asked to buy the antivirals for a reason," said Jerome Hauer, a former assistant secretary for Health and Human Services.
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