Urgent Attention Needed to Restore Lapsed Adenovirus Vaccine Availability: A Letter Report (2000)

A Letter Report

November 6, 2000

Dear General Parker:

In April 2000, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies convened an expert committee to advise the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command on the prevention of natural infectious disease threats to the military. The Committee on a Strategy for Minimizing the Impact of Naturally Occurring Infectious Diseases of Military Importance: Vaccine Issues in the U.S. Military will issue its complete report in January 2002. At its initial three meetings, the committee reviewed the failure of the Department of Defense (DoD) to maintain a supply of the adenovirus vaccine as an example of the problems it faces regarding the licensure, manufacture, and maintenance of special use vaccines. Production of this vaccine ceased in 1996 and stocks were depleted in 1999. What the committee heard was extremely disconcerting with respect to the threat that the lack of this vaccine now poses to the health of recruit populations. The committee submits this interim letter report today with a sense of extreme urgency in an effort to reinforce the view that there is a critical need for the DoD to expeditiously reestablish a process for the licensure, manufacture, purchase, and distribution of the adenovirus vaccine to military personnel undergoing recruit training activities.

The committee found:

• that the adenovirus vaccine is urgently needed to control the epidemic respiratory disease that has caused much morbidity among recruits in the past, and now once again threatens the health and even the lives of military trainees; since acute pulmonary infection due to adenovirus is a nearly unique occupational risk of the military trainee, it is imperative that DoD take rapid and effective action to once more eliminate this preventable disease;

• that the short-term, $14 million Defense Health Program commitment to acquiring an adenovirus vaccine is insufficient to stimulate the interest of capable commercial vaccine manufacturers; and

• that the existing acquisition and procurement systems within DoD are not structured to ensure development and continuing availability of limited use vaccines.

The committee recommends:

• that a much greater sense of urgency be placed on re-acquiring an effective adenovirus vaccine;

• that a significantly larger and long-term commitment be made to restore and maintain the ongoing availability of adenovirus vaccine; and

• that the DoD not only evaluate the cause(s) underlying this serious procurement system failure, but also make a clear commitment to the changes necessary to prevent similar breakdowns in the future. In its final report to you, this committee will address system issues in depth in an attempt to help the Department of Defense define and then resolve the problem.

The basis for these findings and recommendations is presented in the text that follows.

Capping 30 years of military medical research, the licensure of adenovirus type 4 and type 7 oral vaccines was a great success story. Epidemics of severe acute respiratory disease (ARD) had been a leading cause of hospitalization among recruits in Army, Navy, and Marine Corps training installations. In 1971, the first year of widespread use, adenovirus vaccines prevented an estimated 27,000 military hospitalizations. The severe ARD epidemics of the 1950s and 1960s were abolished. The impact of the vaccines, including a reduced need to recycle trainees who missed critical training due to hospitalization, as well as savings in the costs of medical care, made the vaccines extremely cost effective. ¹

As a result of a series of decisions that were made beginning in 1984 by Food and Drug Administration regulators, the manufacturer, and DoD officials, the sole manufacturer, WyethLederle Vaccines, ceased production of adenovirus vaccines in 1996.² Discussions between DoD and the manufacturer between 1984 and 1996 failed to lead to a mutually acceptable agreement that would have allowed continued vaccine availability. No alternative source of the vaccine has been found. The military was the only purchaser of adenovirus vaccine and limited its use to recruits in training operations; no civilian market exists at present for this vaccine.

Military surveillance data show minimal adenovirus-related morbidity during the period when the adenovirus vaccine was available and used at the training installations, followed by increased infection rates and hospitalization as vaccine administration became limited and finally ceased. Between October 1996 and May 1998, among symptomatic trainees at four sites, those who did not receive type 4 and 7 vaccine were 13 times more likely to have a positive adenovirus culture and 28 times more likely to be positive for type 4 or 7 adenovirus.³ Ft. Jackson, Ft. Gordon, NTC Great Lakes, Cape May, Ft. Leonard Wood, Lackland AFB, and, most recently, Ft. Benning, have reported adenovirus epidemics, some with serious morbidity. Some epidemics have required adjustments such as the realignment of resources to convert barracks to infirmaries, the opening of new infirmary wards, the cancellation of elective surgeries, and staffing shifts. A few training camps have seen increases—20-fold at one base—in recruit recycling, when recruits miss enough of the training program that they need to begin again. The published surveillance data graphically show the temporal relationship between vaccine administration and respiratory disease rates in training camps.⁴

In the 1950s and 1960s, before military scientists identified the causative viruses and developed this effective and safe oral vaccine, ⁵ approximately 50 percent of recruits fell ill with acute respiratory disease, with certain sites reporting 80 percent attack rates in some years. The vaccine program cut those rates, and the associated hospitalizations, in half. A 1998 cost-effectiveness analysis, using incidence data, a range of vaccination policy options, and medical and training cost data, estimated a savings of approximately $16 million per year were the DoD to reinstate the vaccine program.⁶

Attempts by the DoD to find an alternative solution, including initial negotiations with another vaccine manufacturer, have been unsuccessful to date. To restart an adenovirus-vaccine program, the new manufacturer must go through the full FDA new-product approval process. With a one-time $14 million investment from the Defense Health Program, the Medical Research and Materiel Command is preparing a Request for Proposals (RFP). Challenges include creating a contract strategy, including elements such as commitments to multi-year funding, to which manufacturers might respond. DoD anticipates releasing the RFP for comments in the fall of 2000, working toward the best-and-final offer stage in January 2001. Even without schedule slippage, a vaccine will not be available for use within the next three years.⁷ The initial funding amount likely will cover only Phase I preparation and some administrative and technical support.⁸

• The DoD urgently needs adenovirus vaccine to (a) prevent increasingly large epidemics of febrile illness that put military personnel at risk of illness and even death,⁹ and (b) avoid

• costs associated with medical care and disrupted or lost training days due to adenovirus illness.

• The military acquisition and procurement system has proven itself to be incapable of maintaining continuous availability of the adenovirus vaccine, and, in the opinion of the committee, its structure is inadequate to avoid similar failures for other limited use vaccine products.

• Although the commitment of $14 million of Defense Health Program funding is welcome, it is clearly not sufficient to reestablish licensure and ensure continued manufacture and purchase of an adenovirus vaccine. It seems unlikely that a commitment of this magnitude will be sufficient to bring competent, experienced manufacturers of vaccines into the negotiation process. The likelihood of restoring adenovirus vaccine to the military is significantly threatened by the lack of a longer range funding commitment.

• Reinstating the adenovirus vaccine program would be cost-effective. The monetary benefits of this vaccine's use unequivocably outweigh the high initial expenditures.

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Military service places young recruits in a uniquely high-risk setting for adenovirus infections during their training. Therefore, the Department of Defense has an obligation to protect recruits against this well-defined and largely preventable infection. To date, military training operations have not been perceived as significantly affected by adenovirus vaccine unavailability, as indicated by the relative lack of attention given the situation by upper-level commanders. However, the ongoing health surveillance, epidemiology, and military preventive medicine networks have gathered incontrovertible evidence of an impending public health emergency.

Committee on a Strategy for Minimizing the Impact of Naturally Occurring Infectious Diseases of Military Importance: Vaccine Issues in the U.S. Military

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