Universal flu vaccine for all UK children

The scheme is expected to be rolled out in two years time, and would give all children the vaccination through a nasal spray. GPs will administer the vaccine for younger children while older children will receive it at school.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the government on vaccination policy, said the flu programme should be extended to this age group because it could reduce the rate of infection by 40 per cent.

Healthy children are among those who are least likely to develop complications from being infected by flu. But because they come into such close contact with each other, they are more likely to transmit the virus to one another and other vulnerable people.

The seasonal vaccine would have to be administered annually to nine million children during a six to eight week window just before the flu season.

It is estimated that such a mass immunisation programme would lead to 11,000 fewer hospital admissions and 2,000 fewer deaths every year.

School nurses are already very hard stretched and come nowhere near delivering the basics from the Healthy Child Programme. If this is just added in to their workload, it will devastate their morale. If it is carried out by ‘lay personnel’ is this appropriate? David Elliman, community child health consultant

Under current recommendations, the over-65s, pregnant women and people with a serious medical condition, including children, are eligible for a seasonal flu jab. No other country offers the flu vaccine to healthy children free of charge.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley accepted the recommendations from the committee, but the Department of Health said it would examine a number of issues related to the programme before it is rolled out.

It will need to decide who will deliver the vaccine and how it will be sourced. Delivering the programme is expected to cost £100m a year.

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Human resourcing

However concerns were raised by some experts about the resources required to deliver such a large vaccination programme. David Elliman, consultant in community child health at Whittington Health, north London, told Channel 4 News he was concerned about the practicality of resourcing such a large-scale progamme.

“School nurses are already very hard stretched and come nowhere near delivering the basics from the Healthy Child Programme. If this is just added in to their workload, it will devastate their morale. If it is carried out by ‘lay personnel’ is this appropriate?,” he said. “In the past school nurses have been very good at implementing one-off vaccines. But my concern is that school nurses already cannot do everything they want to do. This is an immense workload.

“It’s not so much the cost as the people that I’m concerned about,” he added.

‘Significant challenges’

Chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies accepted that committee’s advice would help counter the impact of severe winter flu, but acknowledged the difficulties of the proposals. “There are significant challenges to delivering a programme that requires up to nine million children to be vaccinated during a six-week period and we will look at the recommendations in detail to decide how best to develop and deliver the programme,” she said.

Professor Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol, welcomed the proposal. “Although children don’t die of flu as often as old people do, they can get sick enough to require hospitalisation. Many others are ill enough to require time off school which is disruptive for them and their families. Children also spread flu to other children and to adults including school staff and their families.”

Some parents have rejected vaccines for their children, fearing that it would lower their children’s immune system, or have adverse affects. But this is unfounded, Dr Elliman told Channel 4 News: “It’s something that parents do worry about, but there is lots of evidence to suggest that vaccines have no detrimental effect on their immune system.”