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Qatar - Supreme Council of Health considers vaccine swap deal as H1N1 flu threat wanes

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  • Qatar - Supreme Council of Health considers vaccine swap deal as H1N1 flu threat wanes

    SCH considers vaccine swap deal as H1N1 flu threat wanes
    April 21, 2010

    As the threat from swine flu has waned, the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) is planning to negotiate with vaccine manufacturers to provide Qatar with other vaccines in exchange for the large quantity of H1N1 vaccine it had ordered earlier.
    The SCH had purchased hundreds of thousands of doses of the vaccine last winter.
    In November last year, Minister of Public Health HE Abdullah bin Khalid al-Qahtani had said that the SCH would be receiving up to 200,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine from manufacturers every month throughout the winter.
    ?We are considering the possibilities of exchanging the orders which have not been delivered with other vaccines that are being used in the country,? SCH?s public health director Dr Mohamed al-Thani told Gulf Times.
    The official did not elaborate further on the type of vaccines the SCH was planning to swap H1N1 with.
    However, Dr Mohamed al-Thani said the SCH was not letting its guard down and it would still keep a substantial quantity of the vaccine and the swine flu drug Tamiflu.
    . . .
    On the present level of flu infections in the country, he said while the seasonal flu viruses were still actively circulating within the community, only a few cases of H1N1 have been diagnosed over the past couple of months.
    ?There have been a total of 64 confirmed cases of H1N1 this year between January to March out of which 46 occurred in January, 16 in February and two in March,? Dr Mohamed al-Thani said.
    Until January, the virus had claimed 10 lives in the country, while thousands were quarantined against the disease.

    . . . .
    The official disclosed that the cases of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the country have decreased as compared to the previous months but said it was more compared to the previous year.
    ?There were 3,611 cases of ILI in January, 2,425 in February and 547 in March,? he said.
    . . . .

    Gulf Times - Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper published in Qatar and provide the latest information locally and internationally.
    http://novel-infectious-diseases.blogspot.com/
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