Meningitis type B (MenB) is a highly contagious, often fatal bacterial disease, and when the infection strikes a high-density area like a college campus, a quick response can be the difference between a minor outbreak and a full-on epidemic. Countries throughout the industrialized world use a vaccine to rapidly respond to and contain MenB outbreaks.
But when the infection struck UC-Santa Barbara last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sat on its hands for months, responding to the health crisis with a brand of inefficiency and incompetence that would make the architects of healthcare.gov beam with approval.
By the time the FDA decided to release the MenB vaccine to Santa Barbara last week–offering an uninspiring projection of “several weeks” for delivery of the vaccines–the disease had struck at least four UCSB students, including Aaron Loy, an 18-year-old freshman lacrosse player from Carlsbad who was forced to undergo a life-saving double amputation.
The first case of this year’s MenB was isolated last March, at Princeton University. At that time, countries from Canada to the European Union to Australia had been safely and effectively using the vaccine for months, but the FDA opted to keep the drug buried in bureaucratic purgatory until December, when it finally released a limited supply of vaccines to Princeton. Students at UCSB–and other colleges vulnerable to MenB outbreaks–are still waiting for this potentially life-saving medication, while the FDA continues to offer no reason for its unacceptable delay in approving the drug.
Over the 9 months between the first MenB case and the arrival of the first vaccines, at least 12 students contracted the disease. Fortunately, none of the cases have been fatal, but they very well could have been, as MenB kills about 10 percent of those who contract it and permanently maims 1 in 5 survivors.
The MenB meltdown at the FDA is just one symptom of the federal government’s gross inability to manage our healthcare system. Nearly 4 years into the massive government conquest of healthcare known as Obamacare, Washington has failed at every juncture. With premiums on the rise, thousands losing their insurance, and exchange websites comically useless, it seems only in character that the federal government would willfully keep college students in danger of infectious disease for 9 months while bureaucrats and regulators at the FDA twiddled their thumbs.
We’re still the global leader in healthcare, but it often seems like the federal government is hell-bent on changing that. Whether through disastrous policies like Obamacare, or bureaucratic mismanagement that transcends politics, Washington is inadvertently making the strongest case possible for getting government out of healthcare and returning power to doctors and patients.
Erik Telford is Senior Vice President of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.