Stronger flu jabs next year

STRONGER and better flu vaccines will be available for next year’s flu season with vaccine manufacturers working to have them approved for use in Australia.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Bastian Seidel has called for the vaccine to made available free for everybody.

Australia had 217,000 confirmed flu cases this year, double the record, and reported that experts had called for stronger vaccines available elsewhere in the world to be used here.

Health Minister Greg Hunt has asked Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy to investigate having better vaccines for next year.

“At the request of the Health Minister Greg Hunt, I am working on ways to strengthen the National Immunisation Program, including holding talks with manufacturers on new and strengthened vaccines,” Dr Murphy said.

Pharmaceutical companies that supply the Australian market said yesterday they were working to bring stronger vaccines here.

Adjuvanted flu vaccines, which boost the patient’s immune response, have been used in Europe since 1997 and in the US since 2015.

The four-times strength fluzone vaccine has been approved in the US since 2009.

Immunisation Coalition chairman Paul van Buynder said Australia’s weak vaccine was partly to blame for the worst flu epidemic on record.

“This was a disaster year and if we don’t get policy change, heaven help me,” Professor van Buynder said.