Malta decides to play safe on swine flu vaccine

The swine flu vaccine will not be administered in Malta before it is declared safe by the World Health Organisation, The Times has learnt.

The issue was discussed by Cabinet, which decided not to compromise vaccine safety, the Parliamentary Secretary for Community Care, Mario Galea said.

In the meantime, people considered mostly at risk of complications will still get the antiviral Tamiflu.

Plans by a number of European governments to fast-track the testing of a vaccine against the influenza have raised concerns among experts about its safety. The WHO's flu chief, Keiji Fukuda, has warned about the potential dangers of untested vaccines, although he stopped short of an outright criticism of Europe's approach.

"One of the things that cannot be compromised is the safety of vaccines," he told the Associated Press in an interview, adding that there could not be any question on whether the vaccine was safe or not.

Normally, Europe tests flu vaccines on hundreds of people for several weeks or months to ensure the immune system provides enough antibodies to fight the infection. However, in a bid to ensure that the swine flu vaccine is available at the earliest, the European Medicines Agency is allowing companies to skip mass testing before approval.

The UK, Greece, France and Sweden are planning to start using the vaccine as soon as it is given clearance by the medicines authority. The US is taking a more cautious approach and last week the American government called for several volunteers to test the vaccine's safety.

The US's caution is especially warranted by a medical catastrophe in 1976 when hundreds of people developed a paralysing disorder - Guillain-Barre syndrome - after they were vaccinated for another form of swine flu.

At the time, the fear was of a swine flu epidemic but it never materialised. Yet, more than 30 of the hundreds that developed the rare neurological condition died.

"We are keeping our options open but at the moment the decision is not to go for vaccination before this is declared safe by the WHO," Mr Galea said.

This government decision was also taken in the light of the fact that influenza A H1N1 is con-sidered the mildest pandemic in recent history, a far cry from the dreaded avian in-fluenza, which for years experts thought would cause the next pandemic.

In fact, the majority of patients who fell ill have recovered and some were surprised to be diagnosed with swine flu because they had not been feeling very sick.