Swine flu vaccination

Dr Hilary shares his expert opinion on the swine flu vaccine after a flood of emails and texts from worried parents and pregnant mums

My comments on GMTV about the swine flu vaccination in the last two days have attracted a lot of interest. This stemmed from a survey of GPs showing that as few as 10% of pregnant women being offered the vaccine were taking it up, whilst only 40% of other people did likewise.

The GPs surveyed attributed this to a perception that the current risk of swine flu was low compared with worries about the safety of the vaccine, especially in pregnancy.

My personal take on this is, pregnant women ARE more vulnerable to the disease - as statistics show they are 4x more likely to be admitted to hospital and 10x more likely to need intensive care. There have also been a disproportionately high number of deaths in pregnant women – 12 out of the 124 deaths so far reported in the UK.

There is no reason to believe that the vaccine is not safe either. In animal reproductive toxicology tests, no worries have been unearthed.

But pregnant women DO worry about medications and unnatural medical interventions of any kind whilst their unborn baby develops, even though these procedures are designed to help them.

Some women just have a significant anxiety about it for reasons of their own and at the time of writing swine flu is not the widespread dreaded infection it may yet become.

So whether to have the jab or not must remain individual decision based on individual choice. I believe a doctor's role is to give patients all the facts in which they can base their decision.