H1N1 vaccines could take 12 months to roll out Sunday, July 26, 2009 By Susan Mitchell It could be 12 months before the whole population receives a vaccine for the H1N1 pandemic strain, health officials have warned.
Dr Pat Doorley, national director of population health with the Health Service Executive (HSE), said enough vaccines may not be available for ‘‘possibly 12 months’’.
Although the HSE is planning a mass vaccination programme, it said the vaccine would be delivered in batches and that health workers and at-risk groups would be the first to receive it.
There has been an exponential increase in global demand for vaccines for the so-called swine flu in recent weeks. The Department of Health and HSE plan to offer the entire population a vaccine at a total cost of €90 million. The first batches of vaccines are expected to become available in Ireland in September or October.
However, there may also be some delay between when the vaccines arrive in Ireland and when people receive their first vaccinations. A vaccine for Ireland has to be approved by the Irish Medicines Board before it can be used, although a spokesman for the Department of Health said there was unlikely to be any bureaucratic delay.
While the seasonal flu already causes a number of deaths each year, public health officials are very concerned about the potential fallout from swine flu.
‘‘It may prove to be a milder strain than the seasonal flu, but it could still be a disaster as it is affecting a lot more people,” said Professor Sam McConkey, head of the Department of International Health and Tropical Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
McConkey said the virus was likely to spread widely between September and December.
The European Centre for Disease Control has predicted that between 20 and 40 per cent of the Irish population will get swine flu.
The virus affects young people more severely and McConkey said it was possible that a previous virus with some similar characteristics may have given older people protective antibodies.
The virus can also be dangerous for pregnant women.
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