Sharing vaccines

Sweden's health minister, Maria Larsson, said she and her counterparts were aiming to give the European Commission the right to help those EU countries which are ill-prepared to deal with a massive outbreak of the human variant of swine flu.

Larsson, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said that although the pandemic hasn't hurt the European population as much as feared, it still makes sense to be vaccinated.

"Experts have told us that the pandemic will continue for some years," Larsson said. "If you protect yourself, that will be protection not just for the current situation and the nearest months, but the nearest years."

The emergence of swine flu in April led to widespread public fears, but since then, two new vaccines have been developed and concerns have abated.

But the EU wants to play it safe, and that means seeing to it that as many people as possible are vaccinated, thereby diminishing the likelihood that the disease will ever get a real grip on the population.

Help further afield

In that vein, Larsson said she and her fellow health ministers would also debate whether it made sense to share their vaccine supplies with developing nations outside the EU.

Also on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that some 100 developing countries were in line to receive international donations of swine flu vaccines.

Marie-Paule Kieny, who runs the WHO's vaccine research unit, said the director general would approve a list of countries later in the day and hoped to start getting supplies to their recipients very soon.

"We are trying to have the first deliveries in November," she said, adding that the vaccines will largely go to low income countries and will target some two percent of their population over the next four to five months.

tkw/AP/AFP/dpa
Editor: Nancy Isenson