A White House nurse prepares to administer the H1N1 vaccine to President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009.
(Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
Many Americans are wondering why, when the country needs emergency medical supplies, are no stockpiles available. It turns out, the Obama administration oversaw the depletion of medical emergency supply stocks during the Swine Flu outbreak. The Blaze reports:
During the outbreak, the Obama administration pulled roughly three-fourths of the masks from the stockpile to manage the spread, but never replenished the supply.
Here’s a crucial excerpt buried near the bottom of a recent Bloomberg News story:
The national stockpile used to be somewhat more robust. In 2006, Congress provided supplemental funds to add 104 million N95 masks and 52 million surgical masks in an effort to prepare for a flu pandemic. But after the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog orders for the N95 variety, the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and didn’t build back the supply.
Another article published by the Los Angeles Times last week made the same point but went even further by detailing how the Obama administration failed to restock the supply even after two separate organizations urged them to take action:
After the swine flu epidemic in 2009, a safety-equipment industry association and a federally sponsored task force both recommended that depleted supplies of N95 respirator masks, which filter out airborne particles, be replenished by the stockpile, which is maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
According to Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, the Obama administration pulled roughly 100 million masks during the swine flu epidemic, but the advice to replenish the supply was never heeded.
“Our association is unaware of any major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
