Israel halts swine flu shots for pregnant women, sick kids

Israel halts swine flu shots for pregnant women, sick kids
Posted by mcmOctober 21, 2009The “questionable ingredient” is squalene: Israel got Novartis’s swine flu vaccine with MF59, Novartis’s own squalene adjuvant–the one that now cannot be used in the US.

MCM

H1N1 flu vaccine not suitable for pregnant woman, sick kids
By Dan Even

The Health Ministry has decided to hold off on giving the swine flu vaccine to pregnant women and chronically ill children because vaccine stocks now in Israel contain a substance whose safety and effectiveness in pregnant women has not been fully substantiated.

An estimated 80,000 women in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, along with chronically ill children between 6 months old and 3 years old, will be offered a swine flu vaccine in November that does not contain the additive. That vaccine is manufactured by the French drug company Sanofi Pasteur.

The questionable ingredient has been added to vaccines against both seasonal flu and swine flu and is being sold in Europe and Canada. In laboratory testing on rats in the United States, the presence of the ingredient reduced by 50 percent the amount of vaccine necessary to create an immunity reaction. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of the additive, the comparable European agency has done so.

Read more.

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