TRIBUNE STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

    A majority of states have scaled back immunization requirements for school and day-care programs because of a nationwide shortage of childhood vaccines, leaving open the possibility for disease to spread, a government report warns.
    Utah never changed its requirements, says the state Department of Health, thanks to careful monitoring of immunization inventories that allowed the shots to stay plentiful.
    "Our shortages were not all at one time, it was kind of sporadic shortages," said Linda Able, Utah's immunization-program manager. "We had an inventory that helped us weather things pretty well."
    In a report issued Tuesday, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, outlined the vulnerability of the nation's vaccine supply.
    "It is clear from this report that we have a system that cannot guarantee an adequate supply of vaccines from year to year and is unprepared to handle a potential outbreak of many routine childhood diseases," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.
    "We are putting our children in danger," said Reed, who was chairing a hearing on the issue. "We simply cannot allow decades of tremendous progress in reducing vaccine-preventable diseases to become undone."
    According to the GAO 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, although the 10-page report does not name each state.
    "States reported that vaccine shortages and missed make-up vaccinations may reduce coverage and increase the potential for disease to spread," the investigators wrote.
    The nation has experienced a shortage of childhood vaccines for the past two years, mainly because some manufacturers dropped out of the market while others had to slow production to upgrade their plants. At one point, the government reported a shortage in eight of 11 vaccines.
    Able said Utah participates in the Vaccines for Children program, in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention negotiates large purchase contracts with manufacturers and allows local public and private health clinics to give the shots free to the public.
    That program allowed the state to keep a close watch on inventories and kept Department of Health managers from changing childhood vaccine schedules.
    Doctors were notified by the CDC in July that shortages were over for two vaccines, one for measles, mumps and rubella and another for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. And Tuesday's report said the CDC had advised that supplies for most vaccines were beginning to return to normal.
    But the report warned that "the potential for recurring shortages will remain."