Belgian doctors call for sack of government virologist in row over swine flu adjuvant advice

Belgian doctors call for sack of government virologist in row over swine flu adjuvant advice

Thursday, 29 October 2009 14:37

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The Belgian association of doctors has called for the government's interministerial commissioner for the flu, the virologist Marc Van Ranst, to be fired after he said on Thursday that the Pandemrix swine flu jab with the adjuvant squalene was safe for pregnant women, reports Belgian's Le Soir newspaper.

There are no clinical data on the swine flu vaccine with adjuvants on pregnant women. A trial on pregnant women has just started and involves a swine flu jab without adjuvants. Also, the trial will be finished until the end of next year long after the jabs are to be given.

German doctors have said pregnant women should not get a jab with adjuvants.

The row in Belgian comes after a group of citizens took legal action in a bid to force the government to inform people of the risks associated with the "swine flu" jab as part of free and informed consent.

A poll published Wednesday in Le Journal du Médecin shows that 75% of Belgian doctors think that the "manner in which the flu commissariat communicates with the medical body generates confusion."

More than six out of ten doctors thought that the Commissariat "was provoking pain in the heart of the population."