TD vaccine in short supply

A national shortage of the tetanus-diphtheria (TD) vaccine has caused health officials to limit the number of shots given. Cerro Gordo County Disease Prevention Manager Kathy Hoopman says it comes from a production shortage as one of the manufacturers of the vaccine has decided to quite production, creating the shortage. Hoopman says you probably won’t be getting those booster shots for tetanus or diphtheria when you go to the doctor.Hoopman says tetanus can be a serious disease. It’s a bacteria that lives in soil. Its spores are killed by oxygen, so a dirty or puncture wound can be the worst for tetanus.Hoopman says strict government standards sometimes makes producers drop a certain vaccine from their lines.Aventis Pasteur, the only company manufacturing T-D vaccine, says they’ll hopefully be caught up with the shortage sometime in early 2002.