The Nurses have not taken Swine Flu Vaccine

The government’s plans to push forward the vaccination program for swine flu in Autumn have been set back after it was revealed that 1 in 3 nurses does not want the vaccine.

Despite front-line health care workers going to the front of the queue for the vaccine in order to protect patients, concerns about the safety of the jab and the severity of the illness lead one third of the nurses polled to say they would not get it done.

In an online survey for the Nursing Times, only 37% said they would be vaccinated, with the rest either undecided or determined to turn it down. Of those who said they would be reluctant to get it done, 60% said that safety concerns were putting them off.

At the moment trials are taking place on two different vaccines at the University of Leicester to assess safety and effectiveness. The director of the Department of Health’s immunisation team said that nurses had a duty to protect themselves from contracting the illness.

“They have a duty to themselves, they are at risk. They have a duty to their patients not to infect their patients and they have a duty to their families. I think you solve those responsibilities by being vaccinated” said Prof. David Salisbury. He added, “The evidence that we’ve had is sufficient to persuade the regulators that these are vaccines that will be licensed.”

So far the government has been advising the NHS to offer Tamiflu as influenza treatment , especially in more severe cases, but they are hoping the vaccine could prevent the most vulnerable – and therefore most likely to need Tamiflu – from falling ill in the first place

First to be vaccinated, aside from medical personnel, will be those with underlying health problems like heart disease or renal failure. Children are also expected to be vaccinated.

Fears have been raised that that vaccine has been developed too quickly and that there will not be time for sufficient human trials to ascertain safety before the vaccination program is rolled out. Doctors have been warned to watch out for Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a condition that can cause temporary paralysis which has been linked to previous influenza vaccinations.

The NHS has been criticised for prescribing Tamiflu too readily, with some experts suggesting that by autumn the swine flu strain may have become immune to anti-viral influenza treatments.  An independent panel set up by the Department of Health said on Monday that there were serious concerns about using the medication on such a large scale.

A member of the Committee on Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza, Prof. Robert Dingwall, said that “Some people [on the panel] wanted to take a long-term view of the risk of resistance developing and to seek to preserve the effectiveness of antivirals for the next pandemic, which may be more severe. “

However he added that “It was felt … it would simply be unacceptable to the UK population to tell them we had a huge stockpile of drugs but they were not going to be made available.”

The panel said that paracetamol and ibuprofen were in most cases effective influenza treatments.