Paris: Governments bracing for a second,
possibly more lethal, wave of swine flu are all grappling with
the same unforgiving dilemma: with not enough vaccine to go
around, who is going to get jabbed first?
Any lingering hopes that pharmaceutical companies could
rapidly fill orders for more than a billion doses from
northern hemisphere countries alone were quashed this week by
the World Health Organisation (WHO).
"We need to gather advice on priority groups for initial
protection," WHO head Margaret Chan said on Friday.
"This is one of the most difficult decisions governments
around the world will need to make, especially as we know that
supplies will be extremely limited for some months to come."
But national leaders looking for guidance from
international health authorities on how to best distribute
vaccines that will not be available in most cases before early
October, at best, are bound to be disappointed.
The European Union has yet to issue any guidelines
specific to the new strain of A(H1N1) influenza that has swept
across the globe, infecting hundreds of thousands and claiming
at least 1,800 lives.
The WHO does suggest that health care workers should be
given priority, a policy embraced by most states, but stops
short of making further recommendations.
"Individual countries have to look at their own
conditions and adapt," WHO spokesman Melinda Henry told a news agency
from Geneva.
Bureau Report