August 8, 2022 – A letter signed by 24 national healthcare organizations and trade associations urges Congress to pass the PREVENT Pandemics Act this year. The group of signatories, led by HIDA, represents a wide range of healthcare stakeholders including distributors, physicians, hospitals, public health professionals, infectious disease professionals, scientists, and other stakeholders.
The letter states: “The PREVENT Pandemics Act would improve our testing and treatment capabilities and address the disparities which make public healthcare challenges harder on vulnerable populations. We appreciate the legislation’s supply chain provisions that provide the Strategic National Stockpile with additional flexibility to partner with distributors and manufacturers. … Enacting the PREVENT Pandemics Act will better equip our nation with the tools to combat future public health challenges and threats and bring us one step closer to filling the gaps in our future pandemic response.”
The PREVENT Pandemics Act includes provisions to create a distributor-based readiness model, authorizing the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to contract with medical products distributors to manage a surge capacity of pandemic supplies.
“HIDA was pleased to lead this effort to rally industry to support the PREVENT Pandemics Act,” said HIDA President and CEO Matthew J. Rowan. “COVID – and now monkeypox – demonstrate that pandemics can come from anywhere at any time. Congress needs to build on the lessons of the last pandemic in order to prepare for the next one.”
The PREVENT Pandemics Act – introduced by Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) – is a comprehensive, bipartisan legislative effort to apply lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen medical supply chains and public health preparedness.