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.

Vaccine safety debated

In Italy people are arguing about the safety of the vaccination against the swine flu. This is the biggest debate, not the efficiency of the heath care system or the supply of antiviral drugs. Today the Italian news websites cover the unconfirmed death of a man in Germany after the vaccination. The Deputy Health Ministry Ferruccio Fazio keep reassuring that the vaccine is safe. He also announced that his sons will get the vaccine shot very soon.
Professor Franco Cuccurullo, Presidente of Consiglio Superiore di Sanità, has replied to the doubts risen by the consumer organization Codacons over the adjuvant used in the Focetria vaccine, containing squalene. Anyway, Codacons is collecting evidence of possible cases of adverse effects. The confirmed deaths of the pandemic have risen to 44.