Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: U.S. Faces Flu Vaccine Shortage, 10/11/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec04/flu_10-11.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Did you get the flu last year? Did you have a flu shot?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is the flu and how many people does it impact each year?

A contagious viral illness marked by high fevers and respiratory symptoms, the flu kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year. More than 200,000 people are hospitalized each year due to flu complications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For several decades, the flu vaccine has helped people who came in contact with the virus avoid getting sick. This year's flu season is expected to peak between December and February.

2. What led to the flu vaccine shortage?

The shortage became public when Chiron Corp., one of two companies that supplies flu vaccine to the American market, announced that the British government suspended the manufacturing license at its major factory in Liverpool, England for three months, citing contamination problems.

3. Who are health officials advising to get the flu vaccine this year?

Health officials are asking that only those persons at the most risk get the vaccine. They include adults 65 and older, infants 6-23 months and those who care for them, women who are pregnant during flu season, persons with underlying health conditions and health care workers involved in direct patient care.

4. What contaminated the flu vaccine? Where is it found and what can it do?

On Oct. 7 an anonymous spokesman for the British regulatory agency said that the vaccines were contaminated with the bacteria serratia, the Associated Press reported.

Serratia is commonly found in the environment and although it does not usually harm healthy people, it can cause problems when injected.

5. Why are flu vaccines difficult to make?

Each year scientists try to anticipate the strains of the flu virus for the coming season and make the appropriate vaccine. They have to make this decision months in advance because of current technology limitations. The viruses that are killed to make the flu vaccine are grown in millions of eggs, which takes a long time.

Companies are trying to develop ways to make vaccines in cell cultures, which would speed up the process, but the technology isn't there yet.

6. Other than the flu vaccine process, why aren't more companies making the vaccine?

In addition, few companies make vaccines because they are not very profitable, a problem according to many health experts.

"You cannot have a vital function like vaccine production limited to the manufacturing capacity of two companies. It leaves no room for failure," Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, told the New York Times.

7. What are some possible solutions to this problem, according to health experts?

Many experts in the health industry say that government and private companies need to work together to increase vaccine production.

"We have to realize that the era of dirt cheap vaccines is over," Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a member of a government advisory panel on vaccination, told the New York Times.

"We have to be willing to pay more for the wonderful protection we get from vaccines. When there is more profit, it will be an incentive for companies to enter the market," he added.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you think it's fair to limit the availability of the flu vaccine to a select group of people? Explain your reasoning. If you were in charge of distributing a limited supply of the flu vaccine in your community what would you do? Who would you serve first? Explain.

2. What role do you think the government should take in the production of flu and other vaccines? How might the government convince companies to produce vaccines? Should they? Explain your reasoning.

3. If you got the flu last year and missed the final championship game or your favorite band's concert would you try to get a flu shot this year?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.