18 Nov 2009

Media: Poland refuses the flu vaccine

Today the main piece of news is about Poland that is "calm and unvaccinated." Italian online media are really interested in this story:
Despite a serious outbreak of swine flu in neighboring Ukraine, the Polish government played it cool last week. Polish Health Minister Ewa Kopacz announced that she was not planning to stock up on swine-flu vaccine until it had been properly tested.
"The A/H1N1 vaccine is being produced by three companies, none of which has been able to assess its long-term effects. Their testing lasted a relatively short amount of time. It is not known whether [the vaccine] is safe for children and pregnant women," the health minister explained at a press conference last week.
The safety of the flu vaccine, in Italy the Focetria by Novartis, is still strongly debated. The daily government's report have updated the death toll to 62.

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