Tamiflu : approaching its sell by date
Oh! Dear, Oh! Dear.
The government is pushing Tamiflu hard. Because it has nothing else to offer for swine flu. I am sure that is true, but there is another and much funnier reason. The Jobbing Doctor gets the inside story from a chance meeting with a colleague:
He then told me why the Government were very keen for us to prescribe it to everyone who has a sniffle and a high temperature: you see, most of the stockpiled Tamiflu was for a previous flu scare, and it expires (passes its sell-by date) in the early part of this Autumn (2009) when it effectively and officially becomes useless (as opposed to being pretty useless anyway).
The Jobbing Doctor
Labels: sell by dates, swine flu, Tamiflu
17 Comments:
It's good for up to two years after its sell by date. Are you going to discuss the vaccine rushed in to deal with a flu that is relatively mild.
Baxter are collaborting with Glaxo to produce the vaccine. In the early part of this year, Baxter sent out a vaccine to its facility in Austria. The vaccine was sent to several countries including the Czech Rep where it was tested on ferrets. The ferrets died and it was later discovered that the vaccine contained two live flu viruses. The contamination from Baxter's level 3 facility in the US was no accident. This incident was not reported outside of the countries involved and a small report appeared on a canadian newspaper website.
On the BBC website a concerned medic from Mexico reported that staff at a hospital dealing with the H1N1 virus died after being injected with a vaccine.
How safe will the vaccine be?
The comment on Swine flu vaccine from Anonymous 09:36 is interesting. The last time there was mass vaccination with a rapidly produced H1N1 vaccine, back in 1977, the results were not too good for the population as a whole:
"The emergence of swine influenza at Fort Dix led to the implementation of a mass vaccination program, which resulted in 40 million civilian vaccinations and 532 cases of the Guillain–Barré syndrome (a rare side effect of influenza vaccination), including 32 deaths ". This from the New England Journal of Medicine & not the Daily Mail.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMra0904322v1) For the original paper see Marks JS, Halpin TJ. Guillain-Barré syndrome in recipients of A/New Jersey influenza vaccine. JAMA 1980;243:2490-2494. It is free on line.
Make up your own mind about risk and benefit of the new vaccine, but make sure you base your advice to patients on reliable data.
The Tamiflu that I was prescribed on Sunday has a use by date of Oct 2010.
I have an idea. While the English public are waiting patiently for the vaccine, why doesn't the government and health authorities give out the advice to eat well with a sensible diet that includes lots of fresh fruit and vegetables to naturally boost your immune system. A healthy well maintained body, exercise is good, is more likely to to have a better outcome when it comes to flu.
Is this approach too
Nazi
Complimentary medicene woo making nonsense
Good sense and cost effective
Anonymous -1.33 p.m.
Lucky you - 100,000 batch of Tamiflu expire end of July 2009. Only an idiot would take it in the absence of laboratory test proof.
@John Woolman,
While tragic for the individuals, I wouldn't call 532 ill people and 32 deaths a bad outcome from 40 million treatments.
You can't have 100% safe medications as humans are just too different from each other.
Put risk into context - the death rate is minuscule and does not justify cancelling a program that can help millions of people.
Thanks to swine flu/tamiflu, people now have the expectation of being prescribed tablets when they consult doctors with sore throat, headache and fever- even if they are not particularly unwell.
This expectation will endure long after the swine flu pandemic has passed.
Regardless of whether the current tamiflu strategy is correct, as a working GP this prospect is profoundly depressing.
hello Ian........long time since you last posted: we have missed u
I just discovered this excellent blog, and I am delighted to find that others share my scepticism about Tamiflu. I am an NHS GP and I have prescribed it to two people since the pandemic panic began. I find that if I spell out the limited benefit of this drug, few of my patients are interested in bothering to take it. Most of my knowledge of Tamiflu is from the NICE technical appraisal TA168 published in February 2009 just before Swine Flu emerged. Pity the CMO doesn't seem to have read it!
The point about the side effects of vaccinatiion is that they happen to healthy people. Would I as a healthy person have a vaccination against flu - a short lasting illness that won't leave me with any permanent compliications? No. Would I have a vaccination if I had a lot of co-morbidities and flu might kill me? Yes. Will that attitude help with any sort of herd immunity? No.
can i catch swine flu from taking wine at holy communion at mass?
I wouldn't drink from those wine goblets because you could get all sorts of diseases (Herpes anyone?) never mind the s whine flu.
Given the low numbers of people who now attend Christian Sunday service I would say it would be fine to still go to mass.
if you are a good catholic then the wine is Jesus`s blood. (other faiths think it represents his blood). well if it is alcohol then surely it is fairly clean? although i doubt if it is like 70% like a chlorhexadine wipe. Never the less,lots of people have been taking wine at communion for 2000 years..........so perhaps it is o.k. but then again...........bubolic plague ect ect. thing is if i was in darkest africa and everyone around me had antibiotic resistent TB.......would me faith hold? would i still partake? antibiotic TB buts pig flew in perspective yes?
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I recently had a Tamiflu prescription and I'm sure the sell by date was later than Autumn this year...
There's a cardiologist blogging in the USA who says vitamin D can help with resistance to viruses and other infections - it's an interesting article:
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/search?q=swine+vitamin+d
pigflew, I heard that Australian Catholics have been given a special dispensation in order to not drink wine from the communal goblet in light of swine flu. (My mum's a Catholic and told me). I think Jesus would want people to look after themselves.
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