Health: Friday's priority H1N1 clinic didn't go as smoothly as some had hoped

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SANDRA DAVIS
Telegraph-Journal

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SAINT JOHN - As children wailed in strollers and their care-givers shivered in the cold and damp waiting to be vaccinated against H1N1, you could have shot a canon down the centre of the Barrack Green Armoury's massive gymnasium and not hit a soul.

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Noel Chenier/Telegraph-Journal

While people stood in line outside for most of the morning, the warm, spacious gymnasium was all but vacant.

Noel Chenier/Telegraph-Journal

Hundreds of people waited in line outside an H1N1 vaccine clinic at the Barrack Green Armoury on Friday morning.

While it was warm and cozy inside the Armoury, parents standing outside in below-zero temperatures and snow flurries wrapped their children in blankets for outer protection from the cold wind blowing off the Bay of Fundy.

These hundreds of parents and their children formed an orderly line that ran from the front door of the Armoury, around the perimeter of the parking lot and out the gate, where it snaked along the chain link fence on Broadview Avenue and toward the bay.

They waited to receive one of 2,000 available flu shots that were being offered to priority groups. Runners did scan the lineup for pregnant women, who were escorted in to receive the unadjuvanted vaccine, which is specially prepared for them.

After just over an hour wait, Glen Creamer took his three-and-one-half-year-old daughter and went straight to Mayor Ivan Court's office out of frustration. Even though he said he knew the clinic had nothing to do with the city of Saint John, he simply felt the need to vent.

When he left the Armoury grounds, he guesses he was still about two hours away from getting the shot.

"It felt just like Third World conditions," he said.

"We were out, standing in the mud, in the blowing wind, on the waterfront in Saint John.

"Nobody was attending to us, nobody came by with blankets. There were no washroom facilities or no one to tell us when we could expect to be given the inoculation. There was nobody to render any kind of services whatsoever for a good hour plus."

The only people there who seemed to have any authority were hired security guards, he said.

"Nobody from the health authority came out and nobody from the military came out.

"There were infants crying," Creamer said, breaking down.

"It was awful.

"The inoculation is to prevent sickness, not to make people sick by having children stand outside in the blowing wind on the waterfront in Saint John."

Creamer also took issue with the way the media was treated.

"There was a film crew filming through a chain link fence. And this is Canada," he said. Media were told at the outset that they would not be allowed inside the Barrack Green Armoury gates until 9:30 a.m., when an orchestrated photo opportunity would be held.

Creamer said that, eventually, an Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation employee came out to count how many people needed vaccine and he approached her and asked for help for the crying infants.

"She said, 'I'm sorry sir, I can't help you'.

"There was zero empathy. This woman would have helped if she could have, I'm sure, however, she was unable to. There was such poor organization that we should be ashamed.

"We were outside one of the largest, indoor spaces in Saint John, looking in.

"Somebody seriously dropped the ball when it came to empathizing with people. And I'm not talking about the availability of the vaccine. I'm talking about somebody not caring about people."

Debbie Godlewski, the director for public health from Sussex to St. Stephen, said Friday morning that health-care workers were respecting "the guidelines set out by the people we're working with and they asked not to have an over-abundance of people in. We've just increased the space available for people to wait in and we'll go from there."

Godlewski couldn't say how many people were being let in at any given time at the outset and did not know how many people would use up the vaccine that was available because the serum doesn't translate into equal doses: each adult dose equals two children's doses, she said.

"If everybody was under nine, we would immunize 4,000 people. We're going to have to wait and see how many people come." Nineteen immunization stations had been set up and health workers were told about 12 shots an hour per station is the norm, she said.

"We can do it faster than that, but we can also do it slower than that, depending on the nature of the person sitting down in the chair," she said.

She said the Barrack Green Armoury was chosen because it was in an area where no clinics had been held. She said there was no formal process in place for counting the number of people turned away.

Kim Gray stood with her jacket hood up shivering in line with her young child and her niece and said she planned on staying until her family had been vaccinated or until they ran out of serum, whichever came first.

"It's really scary, seeing as how there was a two-month old baby who passed away not long ago," she said.

Senior citizen Geraldine McLellan, who had been turned away from the St. George clinic, spied a couple of seniors in the lineup and walked over to tell them they were wasting their time trying to get vaccinated because they wouldn't give it to her and she has advanced-stage chronic obstructive lung disease.

Next to them, Melissa Gray stood with her two kids, wearing sandals with no socks.

Glen White also left the lineup after waiting outside.

"With this huge building, you would think they could let people inside to wait, instead of standing out here in the cold," he said, as he took his seven-year-old son home.

"It's so cold, standing by the bay in the freezing wind. I don't know why they didn't have it on a day when people aren't working so you could actually bring your family here."

By early afternoon, workers had set up snake lines with police tape and there was no one left waiting outside, Lisa Kennedy of the Horizon Health Network said, adding that the logistics had been set out by public health.

"Public health did at least three site assessments. It was based on the numbers we thought we'd be getting. It was cold and they realized they could expand that area," Kennedy said. "It's difficult, because they have to gauge the number of people they need to keep in the recovery and First Aid area."

MLA Trevor Holder was there to have his children vaccinated. He said that, while the front-line workers were doing a "phenomenal" job inside with what they had to work with, the clinic's organization was a "nightmare"

"I don't want to overly politicize this, but if I was the (health) minister, I would be all over this. This cannot happen again.

"This has nothing to do with access to the vaccine, but with the organization and logistics of the venue."

Harbour Station would have been a much better venue, he said, where there are seats and lots of room in the pedway. If need be, he said, people could have been lined up straight through to the Aquatic Centre. Harbour Station general manager Mike Caddell said he was never approached about using the facility.

Once inside, folks receiving the vaccine were thankful it was over.

"The immunization team is awesome," said Sherry Graves, who was there with her sons, Brady, 11, and Garett, 2. "They really calmed the kids down," she said.

"I know a lot of people are going without it (the vaccine) and treating it as a regular flu, but why take the chance of complications?" she said. "There's some relief in that you won't have the severe complications that can happen."

Meanwhile, Godlewski said the plan is to immunize everyone in the province by Christmas.

"It was never the intention to immunize 760,000 people in one week," she said.

"We initially heard there wasn't going to be a whole lot of demand and we planned to be in communities and school. Then the demand increased and the supply did not."

She said the hope is to be able to reschedule school-based clinics next week but there is no word on when the public will be inoculated.

Today, the unadjuvanted vaccine will be given to pregnant women at the VON office in Saint John, 199 Chesley Drive, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. In Sussex, a similar clinic will be held on Monday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Royal Canadian Legion, 66 Magnolia Avenue. The unadjuvanted vaccine is designed specifically for pregnant women.

For updated information on the clinics, go to www.gnb.ca/flu or call 1-800-580-0038.