The supply of H1N1 vaccine available for next week is expected to be 1.8 million doses, the federal government said Wednesday, something which came as unexpected news to some provincial health authorities who have been eagerly awaiting that number.The long and short of it kids, is that the government put all its eggs in one basket!
Under attack from the opposition parties in the daily question period over the unpredictability of the vaccine supply, Prime Minister Stephen Harper shared the estimate and said the next shipment will mean more than eight million doses will have been delivered to the provinces and territories.
But according to Ontario's chief medical officer and assistant deputy health minister, they had received no official word on what the national total vaccine supply is expected to be for next week, or what their province's share would be, and they appeared to be caught off-guard by the prime minister's public announcement.
"We have not received any confirmation from the federal government yet as to how much vaccine we're getting, at all. We have received no numbers," said Dr. Arlene King, chief medical officer for Ontario, at a news conference Wednesday. "It's a very important number, how much we get, in terms of planning. We wait eagerly to hear how much we're going to get next week, and when."
Back in 2001 the then Liberal government signed a contract with GlaxoSmithKline to produce all of Canada's flu shots and this has come back to bite the Conservatives in the ass.
Instead of spreading the job around, everything was left up to one company, and now when they can't supply enough in a timely manner we can expect the poop to hit the fan.
Sure the Conservatives can blame the Liberals, and the Liberals can blame the Conservatives, but the sad fact of the matter is that this is typical of so many government programs.
The Harper government ignored internal government pandemic planning that pushed for multiple suppliers of a vaccine in circumstances such as these.
As far back as 2004, the federal-provincial plan for combating a potential pandemic warned Canada to seek more than one supplier of vaccine - advice that wasn’t followed in the run-up to this week’s countrywide shortages.
That's when the political name calling started.
And believe me folks, ya ain't heard nothin' yet!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E! and H E R E! And as a paperback H E R E ! and H E R E !
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