On Jun. 5, 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report titled “Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program: Vulnerabilities in Vaccine Management.”

CDC’s Vaccines for Children (VFC) program provides free vaccines to eligible children through a network of 61 grantees and 44,000 enrolled providers. In 2010, approximately 82 million VFC vaccine doses were administered to an estimated 40 million children at a cost of $3.6 billion. VFC providers must meet certain requirements for vaccine management, such as storing vaccines within required temperature ranges and monitoring expiration dates, to ensure that these vaccines provide children with maximum protection against preventable diseases. These requirements are also intended to decrease VFC program fraud, waste, and abuse.

The report identified multiple vulnerabilities in the distribution of vaccines for children (VFC) in the U.S. Key findings include that 76% of providers had exposed VFCs to inappropriate temperatures for at least 5 cumulative hours in a 2-week period. All 45 providers had recorded temperatures that differed from independently measured temperatures during the 2-week period.

Exposure to inappropriate temperatures can reduce vaccine potency and efficacy, increasing the risk that children are not provided with maximum protection against preventable diseases. Thirteen providers stored expired vaccines together with nonexpired vaccines, increasing the risk of mistakenly administering the expired vaccine.

Finally, the selected providers generally did not meet vaccine management requirements or maintain required documentation. Similarly, none of the five selected grantees met all VFC program oversight requirements, and grantee site visits were not effective in ensuring that providers met vaccine management requirements over time.