PublicService.co.uk
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The World Health Organisation (WHO) overreacted to the swine flu crisis which led to hundreds of millions of pounds being spent unnecessarily on vaccines that, in some countries, were hardly used, according to Paul Flynn, head of a Council of Europe inquiry.
In England the NHS spent around £155m on the vaccines but the number of people with swine flu fell so low that the government had to give away or sell its supply of over 60m doses.
Declaration of a ‘pandemic’ cost huge amounts of money and frightened people needlessly, Flynn said. It also disrupted priorities in health services “which were concentrating on swine flu instead of concentrating on matters which were far more important to save lives”.
Flynn pointed out that the French government bought 94m vaccines which cost around €600m or £520m but just 10 per cent of the population received them. French senator Marie-Christine Blandin is quoted as saying: “It’s a waste.”
However, Professor John Oxford from Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry in Britain, said: “A lot of the criticism is political. I’ve not heard criticism from any virologist.”