Chemist jabs blamed for f lu rise

A LEADING physician has blamed our ‘perverse’ vaccination programme for the worst flu season the country has suffered in years.

He said the fact that pharmacists are now allowed to give flu vaccines – meaning GPs can’t track patient uptake – is one reason the vaccination programme isn’t working.

The latest infectious diseases report released by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HSPC), shows that 11,417 people have been diagnosed with influenza so far this year – a massive increase of 8,584 over the same period last year and a huge contributor to the A&E trolley crisis. Dr Andrew Jordan, head of the National Association of General Practitioners, said the vaccination programme has numerous ‘problems’ that must be dealt with to combat the rising incidence of flu.

Previously, GPs were the sole providers of flu vaccinations in the country until pharmacies were given permission to vaccinate – and at a lower price.

Dr Jordan said GPs used to be able to track whether patients were vaccinated but this is no longer possible.

He said: ‘What you have now is a system where we’re all just giving flu vaccines to whoever wanders in. The higher risk group [including ill and elderly patients] involve a bit of work tracking down but there’s no incentive in the system to actually go out and chase those people.’

That less money is coming in from vaccinations, is, he says, a futher reason that GP practices cannot record a patient’s vaccinations.

‘This is a kind of perverse vaccination programme,’ he added. ‘If you want to really get flu vaccination programmes to work, you need to specifically target the high-risk groups like diabetics, heart-failure patients, people with cystic fibrosis, patients with asthma. A pharmacy is never going to go out into the community and give flu vaccines at people’s houses.’

The HSE does not have figures on the number of vaccinations in the country this year, which, according to Dr Jordan, is symptomatic of the problem.

But it confirmed that 25,217 (38%) eligible staff in the health care sector took a vaccination in the 2017-18 flu season.

Dr Jordan called on our health system to adopt a model similar to that used in Britain. ‘If we had a NHS-type system,’ he said, ‘each practice would know exactly who’s registered.’