If a pandemic should strike the US today, would the country be ready to face it head-on? Apparently not, because thousands of antiviral medications are about to go bad, and citizens should be very concerned about this.
These antiviral medications are stored somewhere in the Department of Homeland Security warehouse, while another warehouse already has in store thousands of already expired antiviral medications. This is troubling, because if a terrible outbreak should happen right this very moment in the United States, it is clear from this report that it would be a disaster.
A recent federal investigation has found [pdf] out that the DHS in its current form is almost completely incapable of handling a serious pandemic, or something that is similar to the H1N1 influenza pandemic that happened in 2009. A global Ebola outbreak would be an even bigger disaster, or a similar flu to the one that took place back in 1918 that took the lives of around 21.5 million people.
Back in 2006, we came to understand that congress gave the DHS $47 million to help prepare the nation for such tragedies. The department went ahead and purchased several items, but some of these items today are likely useless, unable to be found, or completely unnecessary to the problems facing the world.
Based on the report, the inspection opened some doors that have nothing good in them. For example, over 4,000 bottles of hand sanitizers were found; however, these items are expired. Interestingly enough, most of them have been expired for the last four years, that's how bad things are.
To put the problem into perspective, 100 percent of the Tamiflu drug will be expired by 2015, and 81 percent of the antiviral drugs will go bad by the end of next year. Furthermore, when it comes down to Relenza, 46 percent of this item is also expected to expire by 2015 as well.
Investigators are trying to find out if the drugs were stored at the correct temperature. If not, then we believe that someone should lose their jobs over this mishandling.
The DHS currently has several respirators that are bound to reach the manufacturer's period of usability soon.
Surprisingly enough, the department bought around 16 million surgical masks. We have to wonder, what is the need for those much surgical masks? A complete waste of money. The good news, however, is that these masks won't expire, but who knows how long it would take before they begin to rot and break apart.
At the end of the day, the DHS just failed to keep a good record, and it is now coming back to haunt.
