Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Working together, that's leadership

Canada is in the midst of its largest ever vaccination campaign. Given the co-ordination required across three levels of government, set against a backdrop of relentless media scrutiny, understandable public anxiety and partisan posturing in Parliament and the provincial capitals, on balance our public health infrastructure is delivering fairly well.

Not pretty well or excellent, but better than just fair or good. And kudos to those on the front lines of local clinics across the land; your unrelenting professionalism is commendable.

Yes, there are legitimate political questions to be asked. But the rehearsed question period variety, soaked in a combustible mix of faux fury and disingenuous indignation is irresponsible. Instead, questions rooted in fact and posed with a measured tonality are needed.

For example, what is the real story with the “alleged” shortage of vaccine? Last Friday I tweeted and asked: With almost 6 million doses of H1N1 vaccine — as per the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) website — distributed, have 6 million doses been administered?

A national tally today would likely indicate less than 2 million injections, at best, so what is the status of the other 4 million doses? This is where provincial and territorial health ministers must step up and demand answers and assurances from their respective medical officers of health.

They need to explain how they are estimating demand in concert with cities and towns and their logistics approach to regional distribution, security, refrigeration, etc. And if these public health officials are having problems, then reach out to the military or any national grocer for best practices in supply chain management, specifically, the flow of date limited product.

Locally, city councillors like protective services committee chair Diane Deans (always a respectful questioner) should be asking which cities are vaccinating more people per day than Ottawa. Why? How? What are their best practices — communications, number of sites, human resources strategies — that can be incorporated here and now?

Politicians at all levels, government or opposition, might want to think ahead to the next vaccination effort and minimize their meddling in the effort that is now underway. As I wrote last week, biologics — large molecule drugs that are injected or infused — are a big part of our biopharmaceutical and public health future.

So how can we build better systems to properly triage the population to ensure that priority and vulnerable populations get their shots first? A functioning electronic health record system tied directly to microchips in our health cards comes to mind. Imagine, automated calling for appointments, securely cross-referenced against a database combined with a final on-site swipe of your card and voila, sick patients first, healthy folks, come back in two weeks.

The PHAC was created in 2004 largely out of the painful lessons learned as a result of interagency confusion and conflict during SARS in 2003. Inherit in this creation was the realization that health system management and delivery is a shared — not provincial or federal — jurisdiction in Canada. And the second wave of the H1N1 pandemic has only served to reinforce this fact.

If politicians have constructive ideas to improve the present vaccination effort, by all means speak up, speak clearly and speak loudly. Better still, they could park their partisanship and work together in the national interest; now that would be leadership.