Mass swine flu immunisation underway in UK

Those with underlying health conditions and the frontline health workers will be the first of the 11 million people in the ‘priority groups’ to be given the vaccination.

It is reported that nearly two million health and social workers will be given the swine flu jabs since they are at a higher risk of catching the infection and transmitting it to the patients.

Highly vulnerable form the priority groups
The Department of Health of U.K. government has divided priority groups into four categories including people aged over six months and under 65 years with health complications and damaged immune systems; all pregnant women; people in contact with those who have compromised immune systems; and lastly those above the age of 65 with health problems.

The otherwise healthy, above 65 people are not included in the priority group because experts believe they have some sort of natural immunity against the virus.

"This is the first pandemic for which we have had vaccine to protect people. I urge everyone in the priority groups to have the vaccine -- it will help prevent people in clinical risk groups from getting swine flu and the complications that may arise from it,” said Liam Donaldson, Britain's chief medical officer.

He added, "It's important for frontline health and social care workers to have the vaccine. It will help prevent them and their families getting the virus from patients, it will stop them passing the virus onto their patients, it will potentially protect them from mutated strains and it will reduce the disruption to NHS services caused by people being absent due to illness."

Health experts are speculating that except children and severely ill patients, most of the other patients will require just one dose of the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline—UK based pharmaceutical company.

Twin challenge for the GP’s
Since the current swine flu immunisation programme is being run at the same time as the seasonal flu campaign, it poses a huge challenge for the health officials in the country.

Given the workload, extra health staff will have to be employed in the country, however, General Practitioners (GP’s) are ready to face the challenge.

Prof. Steve Field, president of the Royal College of GPs, said, "We have been planning for this for a while and everything is in place. We will be contacting patients in the coming weeks and they should wait for that."

According to the latest figures, nearly 500,000 people in UK have been affected by the pandemic influenza, however, only 106 people have died of the infection so far.