Swine Flu: Estonia Needs 200 000 Vaccines

Although not many people in Estonia are infected with the new flu A/H1N1, also called swine flu, they country might face an epidemic in the beginning of the next year.

To relieve this risk the government, in line with the discussion taking place in other countries,  is planning to order vaccine for people. In many countries vaccination is already being carried out, while here only talks are going on.

“It is not as if the government has just now started to plan the vaccination. The work in the monitoring committee is going on all the time“ claimed the Minister of Social Affairs Hanno Pevkur as a response to the doubt that the government has been observing everything passively.

According to the Minister, the State has so far been observing the situation and mapping actively those who belong to the risk group and need to be dealt with. Now, when the World Health Organisation has announced that it is not necessary to vaccine adults twice, as it was thought earlier, the Estonian government has started to investigate the possibilities for the prevention of the illness.

“It means that very many European countries have more vaccine than they need. The first country who has started to look for someone to sell their vaccine is Holland“ said Pevkur.

At the same time the Minister didn’t know the date when the vaccine would actually arrive to Estonia. According to him there have been many doubts about the effect and the usefulness of the vaccine, on account of which the state didn’t run to issue the contract.

The minster also referred to the problem  that the Canadian scientists have talked about: according to their data, people who have already been vaccinated against swine flu will go down more easily with the usual flu.

The contracts were not concluded earlier for the government and medical manufacturers didn’t reach a suitable letter of intent. According to Pevkur’s information, one of the problem areas lays in the fact that Estonia is small and would need only a small amount of vaccine.

“If we want to vaccine all the risk groups that are recommended by WHO, then we would need the vaccine only for 300- 350 000 people. It is difficult to negotiate on so small amount while the medical manufacturers have orders reaching tens and hundreds of millions,“ he added.

The minister said that the situation in Estonia now has improved because in addition to medical manufacturers, it is now possible to negotiate with other countries as well.