U.S. suffering vaccine shortage for childhood diseases; no problem in Canada
 

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TORONTO (CP) - Many U.S. states are being forced to ration inoculations because of a shortage of vaccines for childhood diseases. But Canada is not suffering a similar shortfall. "We don't have a problem," Health Canada spokesperson Paige Raymond Kovach said Tuesday. "There has been no shortage, to our knowledge, of vaccines in Canada."
 

A majority of states have scaled back immunization requirements for school and day-care programs because of a U.S.-wide shortage of vaccines for diseases such as measles, rubella and chickenpox, a government report warns. The shortage leaves open the possibility for these formerly common diseases to again spread, it said.
 

The report was written by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress.
 

According to the report, 49 state and local immunization programs reported rationing one or more vaccines. Investigators surveyed 64 state, territorial and local immunization programs for the study.
 

The U.S. has experienced a shortage of childhood vaccines for the last two years, mainly because some manufacturers dropped out of the market while others had to slow production to upgrade their plants.
 

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