44th National Immunization Conference

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44th National Immunization Conference
Atlanta, GA

http://www.hhs.gov/secretary/speeches/sp20100419.html

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:

I’m glad to be here at the 44th National Immunization Conference – with the people who are on the front lines of the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic as well as the fight to protect Americans through immunization year in and year out. You should be proud of how aggressively and effectively you all fought, and I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you how far we’ve come.
You remember what began April 21, 2009—almost one year ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced they had identified a flu strain we’d never seen before in California and Texas. When preliminary lab results revealed similar viruses in Mexico, public officials and scientists realized we had a serious outbreak on our hands.
The President made it clear from the beginning that the security of the American people was his top priority. He directed the entire federal government to mount a comprehensive response to what was then a new health threat and which would become a pandemic. On April 28—minutes after I was sworn in as HHS Secretary—I was rushed into the White House Situation Room to get a briefing on the growing number of H1N1 cases.

The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t waste any time. We mobilized the world’s top scientists at CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority, and began working closely with outside groups and other federal agencies.

But soon the H1N1 virus turned up in the New York City schools. Cases were evident around the world, and eventually in the Southern Hemisphere. The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. Well before our country’s traditional winter flu season began, many people—particularly children—had already gotten sick, and some were dying, from flu.

It was time to get the entire country involved.