Out-of-date polio vaccine prompts calls for safeguard

Up to 10 per cent of polio vaccines from a batch under investigation for links with CJD may have been issued after their expiry date, it emerged yesterday. Calls were made for improved vaccination tracing mechanisms.

A total of 4,520 out-of-date polio vaccines from the queried batch were issued in five health board areas, the Department of Health and Children has confirmed. A further three health boards have yet to report their findings.

The cases were discovered in the course of investigations into a polio vaccine batch, issued to an estimated 50,000-60,000 children, which contained serum from a donor who had been diagnosed with variant CJD.

Mr Denis Naughten TD (FG) said the findings raised questions as to whether other vaccinations such as the three-in-one MMR shot, or the Hib vaccine, were issued in date. "GPs are supposed to be competent and they should not be issuing out-of-date vaccines like this."

The effectiveness of the polio vaccine is diminished if used more than one month out of date. The Department is now seeking to establish how many children fell outside this timescale to ensure they are re-vaccinated.

Mr Naughton said the revelation was "a further indication of the chaos inherent in our health services" and called for the immediate introduction of "smart cards" for immunised children to help prevent similar incidents recurring.

The Irish Medical Organisation's GP spokesman, Dr Cormac Macnamara, said doctors were already seeking to develop better tracing mechanisms as part of an overhaul of the immunisation programme. "The problem stems back to the 1950s and 1960s when immunisation was treated in a very ad-hoc and cavalier manner."

Answering criticism of GPs, he admitted "at the end of the day the individual GP, of course, should have checked the dates". However, he noted health boards often issued vaccines on, or close to, their expiry date, which did not help GPs.

IMO checks in one health board area indicated that "not one of the kids" recorded by the board as having received out-of-date vaccine was recorded as such by the relevant doctor.

The National Immunisation Steering Committee, established by the health boards' chief executive officers, is to consider possible mechanisms to guard against the use of out-of-date vaccinations in the future.

According to the Department, parents of children who received the out-of-date polio vaccine will be contacted via the health boards or their GPs.

As regards the risk of CJD-infection from the vaccine, the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, has stressed it was "almost certainly" zero.

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service has deferred for a further week an announcement on whether to ban 15,000 donors from giving blood because of a risk of carrying variant CJD.