People will die after swine flu vaccine - but it's just coincidence

People will die after swine flu vaccine - but it's just coincidence
Six people in Britain can be expected to die suddenly after having the swine flu vaccine but it will just be coincidence, researchers have said.

By Rebecca Smith and Kate Devlin, Medical team
Published: 8:00AM GMT 31 Oct 2009

With millions of people being vaccinated against the virus there is a real risk that coincidental events will be seen as reactions to the jab, a paper in The Lancet said.

Experts at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in America calculated the background rate of conditions that may be mistaken for vaccine reactions and warned that there is a risk people will shun the jab needlessly.


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Fears of swine flu crisis grow as six-year-old girl and doctor dieOnly if these background rates are exceeded will it point to a potential problem with the vaccine.

Medical experts have been told to watch for any cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome during the flu pandemic as some research suggested there was a link between a flu vaccine used in America in 1976 and the condition, in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system and can be fatal in rare cases.

However flu itself it also linked to the condition and about one in every 100,000 people a year.