Illinois governor blasts US over flu vaccine delay

Illinois may be unable to resell hundreds of thousands doses of flu vaccine it committed to buy in Europe three months ago but never got approval to import, Gov. Rod Blagojevich said on Friday.

Illinois, New Mexico, New York City and Cleveland collectively agreed to pay the $7 million cost for roughly 650,000 doses from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi-Aventis in Europe. Any unsold vaccine may have to be discarded.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, wrote a letter to the US Food and Drug Administration blasting the agency for delaying approval of the vaccine purchases despite what had been a U.S. shortage of vaccine.

“In an unbelievable display of utter disregard for the citizens of our states and cities, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to respond to our request for approval to import additional supplies of vaccine,” Blagojevich said in a letter to acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford. Illinois’ first request for approval was made October 25.

“We are left in a very difficult situation as a result; it is likely too late to get the vaccine to our populations before flu season peaks, and it is also now difficult to resell the vaccine on the European market because their flu season is also waning,” he said.

The FDA had given grudging support to Illinois’ efforts to find more supplies of flu vaccine, but has blamed documentation and inspection problems for the delay. 

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