Westminster urged to pay £100m for Scots flu jabs

Published on Sunday 21 June 2009 23:14

WESTMINSTER should pay the £100 million bill for vaccinating everyone in Scotland against swine flu, the Scottish Government said yesterday as 60 new cases were confirmed.

Plans are in place to offer jabs to everyone in the UK once a vaccine has been developed.

Yesterday, health secretary Nicola Sturgeon argued that the cost of H1N1 vaccination should be covered from contingency funding held by the Treasury, but she admitted the response so far had "not been entirely positive", raising the prospect that Scotland will have to find the funding itself.

Yesterday, the Treasury indicated that funding from contingency budgets would not be forthcoming.

The total number of lab- confirmed flu cases in Scotland has risen by 60 to 626 – one of the biggest daily increases seen so far. Of the new cases, 57 were in Greater Glasgow. In addition, more than 1,400 cases were clinically diagnosed on the basis of symptoms alone, before Glasgow returned to lab testing of all patients.

A further 461 possible cases are being investigated, while four patients with the H1N1 virus remain in hospital in Scotland.

Some 246 cases were confirmed in England yesterday, bringing the UK total to more than 2,500.

Ms Sturgeon said: "We are very clearly and firmly still in a phase of trying as best we can to contain the spread of the virus but, as we have always said, that will only work up to a point and therefore we are preparing very hard as well for what we do when the virus becomes more widespread, as in other countries."

She added that vaccinating the Scottish population against swine flu was likely to cost in excess of 100 million.

"It's the right policy and it is a policy decision that has been taken by health ministers right across the UK, because even if the flu virus doesn't become any more serious... it will have a big economic and social impact."

Ms Sturgeon said, like administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland, Holyrood had made a case to the Treasury for access to UK contingency funding.

"We have budgeted for certain things within the Scottish budget, stockpiling antivirals for example, but we can't budget for something like a vaccine when we didn't know when we would have to procure that vaccine.

"We think it's right that UK contingency funding should be available, as it was during the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

If a flu pandemic is not a contingency, I can't think what is.

"The response thus far has not been entirely positive, but we will continue to seek constructive discussions," she added.

If the discussions are not successful, Ms Sturgeon said funding would have to be found from the government's budget.

A Treasury spokesman said: "Consistent with the approach being applied throughout the UK, spending on dealing with flu will be met from within existing departmental budgets."