Article Date: Thursday 01 07 10 19:14:00
Article Source: BBC NEWS | Fergus On Flu
Main Article Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/ferguswalsh/2010/07/swine_flu_how_did_we_do.html
This blog is no longer called Fergus on Flu, but I'm still happy to talk about pandemics.
Boiling down nearly 200 pages to two words, the Hine review's verdict on the UK response to H1N1 can be summed up as "highly satisfactory". Dame Deidre Hine repeatedly praises the planning and the response to the pandemic last year.
That said, there is a series of lessons to be learned, in particular about contract negotiations with vaccine manufacturers. She says the failure, in 2007, to negotiate get-out clauses in the vaccine contract "exposed the Exchequer to some risk". In other words, it cost the tax-payer money and we were left with lots of unused doses of vaccine. What Dame Deirdre does not tell us, because of commercial confidentiality, is how much that cost us.
Before condemning ministers and officials for poor planning, it's worth pointing out that no country in the world managed to negotiate a break clause with GlaxoSmithKline for its Pandemrix H1N1 vaccine.
Furthermore, had the pandemic been as bad as everyone originally feared, those extra doses of vaccine might have saved tens of thousands of lives.
Once last point. Given how mild the H1N1 pandemic was, how on earth are health officials and virologists ever going to interest the public in the potential dangers of the next pandemic? The next one may be a lot more serious.
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