A NUMBER of GPs who are this week meant to be administering the swine flu vaccine to at-risk patients have still not received supplies of the H1N1 vaccine from the Health Service Executive.
One south Dublin GP told The Irish Timeslast night he ordered supplies of the vaccine weeks ago and had still not received any. "They seem to have lost our application," he said. "The system they have is very, very rigid. They have a supplier called Cold Chain and they can't give us vaccine until next week," he added.
His phone has been “hopping” with patients seeking the vaccine but he has been told, he said, not to refer at-risk patients other than pregnant women to the special swine flu clinic set up by the executive at Balally for patients who can’t get the vaccine from their GP. “It’s hugely frustrating for the patients,” he added.
The HSE confirmed “a small number of GPs” has yet to receive their vaccine but it stressed additional vehicles had been drafted in to assist in the delivery of the vaccines and every effort was being made to ensure GPs receive vaccine in a planned and sustained way over coming weeks. It added that 100,000 vaccines will be delivered to GPs this week and an additional 100,000 next week.
Another Dublin-based GP said the biggest problem was trying to set aside time to vaccinate at-risk patients when so many other patients were coming to the surgery for treatment of swine flu. More than 100,000 people in the State have had swine flu at this stage and rates of infection have been increasing every week.
The HSE said 2,656 people had received the swine flu vaccine at its special clinics by yesterday afternoon. It is not known how many more would have received it from GPs.
The at-risk patients who are urged to come forward for vaccination now are those aged 6 months to 65 years who have long-term lung, kidney, heart or liver disease, neurological conditions like MS, weakened immune systems, respiratory problems like asthma or cystic fibrosis, diabetes, the morbidly obese and women more than 14 weeks pregnant and up to six weeks after giving birth.
Eight reports of adverse reactions to the new vaccine had been reported to the Irish Medicines Board by 2.30pm yesterday. These were expected reactions like redness and swelling around the injection site.
The authors of a study on over 1,000 hospitalised cases of swine flu between April and August in California published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Associationsay that in contrast with the common perception that the pandemic flu causes only mild illness, hospitalisation and death occurred at all ages, and up to 30 per cent of hospitalised cases were severely ill. The overall mortality rate was 11 per cent, with fatalities most common among people aged 50 years and over.