I refer to the article written by David Lindsay, entitled “GRTU warns against flu vaccine sales by health centres, doctors” (TMID, 6 January).

The sale of vaccines from the Government’s National Immunisation Service is nothing new and is a practice that goes back several decades. A variety of vaccines including typhoid, polio, hepatitis B, rabies, tetanus, meningococcal meningitis A&C, cholera, yellow fever, diphtheria-tetanus, measles-mumps-rubella, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and haemophilus influenzae (HiB) have been available for sale to the general public at the Floriana Health Centre for many years, mainly to serve travellers, but also members of the public whenever such vaccines are not available from community pharmacies.

It is well-known that most of the community pharmacies do not keep a large and varied stock of vaccines in their refrigerators due to the hassle of the cold chain and the low consumption patterns – so on many occasions the only available supply for the public is the National Immunisation Service.

The decision to open up the remaining stocks of influenza vaccine for sale to the general public, was taken on 24 November, when most of the vaccines in the private sector had already been dispensed, the vaccination campaign was coming to its end and there were no stocks available on the market.

In fact, only 181 doses of these extra stocks of influenza vaccine were sold to the public – hardly enough to cause “unnecessary financial losses”, as claimed by the GRTU.

Emanuel Abela

Director of Information