Romania confesses vaccine not safe

“Pandemic vaccine not authorised for under-16s,” reads Evenimentul Zilei’s headline. The vaccination campaign for swine flu (H1N1), which gets underway in Romania on 27th November, launches with this one major restriction. For the time being, although there is some discussion about the harmlessness or otherwise of the vaccine in several countries, the authorities in Bucharest are the only to have acknowledged that “clinical trials on children have only just started and the results will not be available before January 2010.” The vaccine was developed in Bucharest by the Institute Cantacuzino; it is a pure vaccine containing no additives “because they would have to be tested too”. As of 26th November, there were over 2,700 confirmed cases of swine flu (H1N1) and two deaths from the disease out of a population of 22 million.