Swine flu decisions 'were in patients' best interests'

Patients' best interests were kept in mind when dealing with the swine flu, the health director general said, after the Council of Europe identified "grave shortcomings" in the way the pandemic was handled.

In hindsight, it was easy to be wiser about the way the pandemic was tackled, Ray Busuttil said, adding: "At the time we did not know what the virus was going to be like or how it was going to act."

He said the pandemic preparedness plan was well accounted for and Malta adjusted its plan according to the needs it was facing at the time. He explained that the vaccines and the antivirals used for the H1N1 pandemic had been bought four years ago and Malta should feel lucky the pandemic did not turn out to be as bad as it could have.

The handling of the influenza pandemic worldwide came under scrutiny last week, when the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly stated that the way this was managed by the World Health Organisation, EU health agencies and national governments led to a "waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks".

The assembly said the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO and raised questions of conflict of interest from members of its Emergency Committee which advised it on the pandemic. According to investment bank JP Morgan, drug companies made profits estimated at between $7 billion to $10 billion on vaccines.

In Malta, approximately €2.5 to €3 million was spent on vaccines and their campaign alone. The government eventually ended up with 239,620 unused swine flu vaccines in stock, worth almost €600,000.

According to the British Medical Journal, some experts advising WHO had "declarable financial ties". For example, WHO's guidance on the use of antivirals in a pandemic was authored by an influenza expert who at the same time was receiving payments from Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, for consultancy work and lecturing. In reply to the journal's editorial, WHO director general Margaret Chan said the organisation was working on establishing and enforcing stricter rules of engagement with industry.

An independent review committee was founded in April to evaluate WHO's performance during the pandemic. She added, however, that "decisions to raise the level of pandemic alert were based on clearly defined viriological and epidemiological criteria". It was hard to "bend" these criteria, irrespective of the motive.

According to the journal, WHO will not be the only body to come under scrutiny for the way the swine flu pandemic was handled, as the European Commission, the European Parliament and national bodies are expected to release their own reports in the coming months.