Washington's smallpox preparedness program

During early 2003, Washington State gave smallpox vaccinations to over 500 disease investigators, doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and others. These volunteers will form smallpox response teams that will be able to provide essential medical and public health services immediately if a smallpox outbreak occurs in our state. The vaccination process, known as Stage 1 of the National Smallpox Vaccination Program, has been completed but we are still working to make sure that we are prepared for any potential outbreak.

We benefited from our experience during Phase 1 in a number of ways--we gained valuable experience operating large-scale vaccination clinics, raised public awareness of the issues surrounding smallpox, upgraded our laboratories’ ability to handle and analyze potential bioterrorism samples, and created a system for tracking the status of vaccinated persons, vaccine use, and related data. Additionally, we now have more clinicians trained to recognize and care for smallpox patients, more hospitals prepared to receive patients, and more trained public health workers to investigate cases and implement isolation procedures to prevent the spread of smallpox if we have an attack.

Currently, we are training public health team members and updating our smallpox response plans to include the lessons we learned during Stage 1. We are not actively seeking to immunize new smallpox team members but have shifted our focus to identifying those with needed skills who are ready and willing to be vaccinated at the first report of a smallpox case. Additionally, we are improving the way we track rash illnesses and  improving our ability to conduct large scale vaccination clinics.

We cannot know for certain the exact level of threat, however, we do know the consequences of a smallpox attack on an unprepared nation would be severe. It remains valuable to be prepared for a potential attack, and it is important to remember that most of what we do to to prepare for a possible smallpox attack strengthens our public health system and improves our ability to respond to other types of public health emergencies.