France to sell off millions of surplus flu shots

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France to sell off millions of surplus flu shots

France has joined other European countries in selling off part of its stock of

swine flu vaccines after it emerged that one shot was enough to fight off the

virus. By News Wires (text)

AFP - France has joined other European countries in selling off millions of its

emergency swine flu vaccines after buying far more than it needed to fight the

outbreak, the government said Sunday.

" We started with a plan for two-dose vaccinations but since one dose is

sufficient we can start to re-sell part of the stock, " a French health ministry

official told AFP.

Like some other European countries, France has witnessed less demand than

expected after spending 869 million euros (1.25 billion dollars) on vaccines for

the A(H1N1) flu virus.

It bought 94 million doses -- almost one and a half for every member of the

population -- but so far only about five million people in France are recorded

as having been vaccinated since the programme launched in October.

France took the decision to sell some of its stock after European medical

authorities said that a one-off vaccination was enough to protect against the

virus.

The ministry said Qatar had already bought 300,000 doses from France and Egypt

was negotiating to buy two million. France is also in discussions with Mexico

and Ukraine, it said.

Germany also said last month it was looking to sell off vaccines even though its

full order of 50 million doses was not due to be delivered until March. Only

about five percent of the population had been vaccinated in Germany.

A health ministry senior official in the German state of Thuringia, Hartmut

Schubert, said there had been requests from Afghanistan and Eastern European

countries including Ukraine -- where France is now competing with it.

The Netherlands announced in November that it would sell 19 million of the 34

million vaccines it ordered to countries with a shortage of them, judging its

own flu scare to be past.

Spain's Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez was quoted as saying in the daily El

Pais on Sunday that it expects to buy a total of about 13 million doses --

little more than a third of its earlier estimate of 37 million.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said last month that A(H1N1) was reaching a

peak in much of western Europe, as the disease progressed into central Europe

and through parts of Asia.

German authorities said Moldova, Kosovo, Mongolia and the Maldives had

approached them asking for vaccines to be donated as aid.

The WHO said last week that swine flu has killed at least 12,220 people

worldwide, the biggest share of them in the United States and Canada, but had

peaked and was declining in North America.

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