Poor response prompts swine flu vaccine extension

The health authorities insisted yesterday they did not have an oversupply of swine flu vaccines, despite the fact that just a fifth of the population has been inoculated.

"The government did not overstock - we had estimated the country's needs and bought the vaccines accordingly," health director general Ray Busuttil said.

The government yesterday extended by another two weeks the deadline for free inoculations at health centres after the take-up was much lower than expected.

The public was given nine days to attend health centres for the inoculations but up till Thursday evening only 73,825 had taken the jab.

Malta had placed an order for 425,000 jabs with the British pharmaceutical giant Glaxosmithkline.

So far, two batches amounting to 200,000 vaccines have arrived in Malta and the remaining consignment is expected by the end of this month.

On the advice of the World Health Organisation, the government had calculated there was a need to administer two doses of the vaccine for people under 18 and aged 60 and over.

But in a statement issued yesterday, the health authorities said it was following the recommendations of the Pandemic Health Committee, which said that one dose was enough for these groups.

Dr Busuttil said it was difficult to explain why the take-up was so low. However, he said it could be down to a combination of factors which include the mildness of the disease and bad publicity around the vaccine.

"The disease is mild and people might not be inclined to take it. There was also a lot of adverse publicity which we tried to counter-act with scientific evidence. But bad news travels fast," he said.

The worst of the outbreak was also over, Dr Busuttil said. But, the health authorities are still urging everyone to take the jab against the virus that has so far killed five people in Malta.

Compared with other EU countries, Malta had a very positive take-up as during the past week, an average of 2,500 people a day were inoculated, Dr Busuttil said.

Only recently, the WHO was harshly criticised for declaring a pandemic which has enabled drug companies to rake-in millions following the worldwide scare. Last month, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK admitted they were trying to offload millions of jabs by selling them to developing countries.