An Inexcusable Delay

The slow response of Congress to the developing shortage of vaccines for children is bewildering. The facts are clear. Shortages already are inevitable. Further delay in providing supplementary funds will only exacerbate the problem.

The delay is all the more confounding because the amount of money, $20 million, is a truly insignificant percentage of the total federal budget and would be dwarfed by the extraordinary costs implicit in any outbreak of the diseases controlled by the vaccination program.

The shortfall is in the federal funding for state programs to immunize children against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella and polio. The problem has been created by escalating costs brought on by the necessity of creating a federal fund to handle liability cases growing out of the injuries that can result from the vaccines. The risks are minuscule compared with the danger of going without the immunizations, but injuries still occur occasionally.

The immunization of children is constructed through series of shots over regulated periods. There is now the prospect of significant interruptions of those essential programs as the supply of vaccines is affected by the rising costs of the federal program. The dollars originally appropriated are buying fewer shots.

Increased funding is already under consideration for next year, and that is fine. But there has yet to be action on supplemental funding to complete the current year’s program, and that is inexcusable.