Content area
Full text
I t is a very British thing to do: when people complain, someone must be at fault. Recently the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, suggested that general practitioners might have been giving flu vaccine to the "worried well" rather than to those patients who are most at risk and thus recommended for vaccination, resulting in a shortage. The suggestion led GPs' leaders to defend their profession and to blame the shortage on heightened public awareness of avian flu and the threat of a human pandemic, increasing public demand for the vaccine, which has outstripped supply. The debate has now moved on to the issue of whether GPs and the government ordered enough vaccine from the suppliers to ensure that all those recommended for vaccination received it ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4456876.stm ), as well as the issue of some vital doses being not only given to the worried well but also siphoned off by private companies as perks for their employees.
Credit: DR GOPAL MURTI/SPL Between 2000 and 2005 the amount of flu vaccine used in this country doubled
At the heart of the problem has been our inability in the past in Britain to effectively estimate and target those most at risk and recommended for vaccination. Some 20 years ago flu and its prevention by vaccination were given low priority by the...