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now it's time for dr. Rachel reports

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with dr. Rachel Dunlop and I'm dr. H E

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and here we are at the free vaccine

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clinic at dragon con 2010 in Atlanta

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Georgia and i'm here with Bill Atkinson

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hello bill welcome to the skeptic zone

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what I'm doing well thank you very much

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now you are in immunization from the

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Centers for Disease Control the CDC it's

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great you're an MD with a master's in

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public health yes and you helped to set

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up the vaccine clinic here at Dragon Con

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yes can you tell me about your role in

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setting it up my job day-to-day is

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mainly training doctors and nurses how

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to give vaccines I met I met Maria

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Walters at tam and introduced myself and

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she remembered me when she got back here

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and initiated the idea of doing a

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program like this and I was the one who

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sort of knew the contacts who had the

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vaccine and the nurses and the skills to

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actually give it so I was sort of the

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intermediary between the people with the

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idea and the people who are doing the

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vaccinating right so at the city state

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your role is in epidemiology

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immunization epidemiology or vaccine

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epidemiology yes I have in the past work

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in measles vaccine epidemiology and now

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I primarily try to train doctors and

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nurses about vaccine there's a lot of

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constant changes as you know and in the

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vaccination realm and so my job is to

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make sure that doctors and nurses in the

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US are kept up to date on what the new

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recommendations are and what they should

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be doing and there's a good reason why

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we are here today in the vaccine clinic

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at dragoncon there's currently an

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epidemic of whooping cough in California

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can you tell us a little bit about that

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we've already had deaths of seven or

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eight young children how bad is that

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epidemic at the moment we've seen quite

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a lot of pertussis in in several states

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California being the most notable there

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have been 10 15 deaths countrywide what

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we're seeing is a lot of the cases

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been in children but they're being

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affected by their parents and their

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siblings and their babysitter's so we

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thought this was a good idea here

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because this is a lot of the age of the

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people that may have children at home

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may have contacts with children at home

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and thought this was a very fertile area

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likely and a lot of these kids have not

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had pertussis vaccine before or at least

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recently and the thing is with the

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pitocin spec seen it wears off after a

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number of years right so as an adult you

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need to get a booster because you can be

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a carrier but then you can pass it on to

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young children who are particularly

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susceptible is that right absolutely

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correct probably most of us got our last

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dose of pertussis vaccine when we were

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five or six and it's only been since

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2005 that we've had this new vaccine we

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could give to adolescents and adults so

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it's a relatively new vaccine and we

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hope it will make a big difference in

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put gus's both in the US and elsewhere

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as well so who is the most susceptible

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to pertussis we're talking about young

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kids but we're also talking about people

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with immune suppression are we what who

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are the people that are most at risk the

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most really anybody can be infected who

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hasn't been who hasn't been vaccinated

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recently adults because of our the size

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of our Airways tend to have fewer severe

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symptoms they could be pretty sick but

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it's mostly the really young children

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who have the most severe disease because

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their Airways are very tiny and because

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they likely have not had all their doses

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of their pediatric childhood vaccine

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series yet so we worry most about

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children that's most likely to die most

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likely to have very severe illness but

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really any of us can can cough it on

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anybody else that we haven't we haven't

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had a vaccine within a few years and how

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is it transmitted transmitted by by

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droplets by air with respiratory

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droplets when people cough sneeze talk

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anything it's a very efficiently

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transmitted bacteria and it is very

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easily transmitted from person to person

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so what role do you think the low levels

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of vaccinations are having in this

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epidemic if any because I know that some

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people are now choosing not to vaccinate

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their children for all sorts of reasons

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but some of this is to do with the

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anti-vaccine quite active in America we

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have the same problem in Australia do

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you think that's contributed at all to

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these recent outbreaks it probably does

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I think probably the bigger problem

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that tends to be a fairly small

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proportion except they tend to cluster

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together folks who who haven't been

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vaccinated we think probably in the u.s.

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it's not more than one or two percent of

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people but in some areas it can be much

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much higher than that because they sort

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of have communities if you will and but

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the biggest problem I think right now is

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the fact that most adults and

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adolescents have not had a dose of

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pertussis vaccine for so long so the

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kind of vaccine we're doing here is

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exactly i think what we need to do to

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raise the level of immunity in the

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population and help stomp out this

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outbreak we're having them so what's the

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response been like here in the clinic at

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dragoncon it's been very good we didn't

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really know what was going to happen is

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the first time this has been tried but

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we are probably going to use all our

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vaccine today we came with we came with

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a hundred doses yesterday gave almost

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all of them came with more than 100

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today and it looks like we're going to

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probably give out all those too so it's

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actually been quite successful since we

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didn't really know what to suspect but

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the uptake has been very good yeah we're

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very happy with ways turned out and so

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what kind of people have you been

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vaccinating are you talking about the

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the people that you really want to

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target which is the adolescents and the

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young parents kind of what sort of

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demographic this thing has been it's

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been it looks like about half men and

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women about half of each and we have

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seen mostly it looks just we haven't

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actually crunched the numbers low yet

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but it looks like it's been people in

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their 30s 20s 30s and 40s it's who is

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exactly the folks that we were hoping to

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be able to vaccinate while we were here

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so I'm fascinated by this but the fact

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that you can actually do this bill

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because in Australia I don't know if

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it's that common that you can kind of I

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mean this was set up by the skeptics as

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you said Maria Walters and they rented

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out a shopfront and for the weekend and

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got you guys on board and in terms of

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liability and health issues and stuff is

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that's already in place in America to do

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that sort of thing is it it is we do a

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lot of that in public health and the

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United States and fortunately the state

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of Georgia and one of the local County

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Health Department's really have a lot of

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experience doing remote immunization

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operations they had a protocol set up

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they had the equipment and the people

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who are willing to

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down and spend their weekend down here

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and volunteer so they we actually have a

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very good infrastructure we some places

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are better at doing that than others we

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got lucky we have a very good group here

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in the Atlanta area that was able to

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come out and do this for us you see them

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sitting right back there behind us now

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and they've been busy all day they're

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very busy at the moment but i noticed

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behind us also there's free HIV testing

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here how does how do you conduct that

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it's actually a saliva test for

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antibodies and that was kind of an

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afterthought it turns out that the the

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folks doing the HIV testing work in the

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same office as as the nurses back there

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doing the vaccinating so they it was

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word of mouth again kind of right place

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right time they said well we're going

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down would you like to come with us and

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there may be some high-risk folks there

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lots of tattoos lots of things and and

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they thought good opportunity to do this

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and really they've had a good response

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even though we didn't really advertise

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this at all they just kind of came and

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set up shopping it we just kind of let

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it run so what about the counseling sort

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of aspect of the HIV testing do you get

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a result right here or do you send that

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test away and then it's done all it

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takes 20 minutes it's all done right on

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the spot we ask the person to come back

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we won't email it or anything we want to

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come back and be able to counsel them as

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to what the results mean we interest Nia

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are using the dressing rooms for our

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little counseling offices oh I say right

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yeah when getting out of those little

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rooms just with a former clothing store

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I say and they've been using the the

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dressing rooms as the counseling rooms

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all right so the results for the HIV are

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given in the dressing room and right

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here right here 20 minutes interesting

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interesting well thank you so much bill

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for joining us today well I think this

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is a fantastic initiative I don't know

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if we have anything like this in

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Australia I wish we could have something

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like this I don't know if you know but

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we've had measles outbreaks recently and

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we've had australia-wide we've had

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pertussis epidemics as well so we have

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similar problems to America in that

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sense and I think this is a great thing