Paul Flynn: 'An appalling waste of cash'

THERE were four major problems at the heart of what happened with the swine flu episode.

First, the world was unnecessarily frightened witless by claims made by experts that it could killed between two and 7.5 million people, 65,000 in London. This caused panic among the public for what in the end was a mild case of flu.

People were made to expect something akin to the crisis of 1918 which killed millions when in reality it was less than normal seasonal flu.

It was much closer to the pandemics of 1957, 1968 and 1977 which were all mild.

In Britain there were 500 deaths of people who had the flu, just maybe 150 of those because of it. That is lower than the seasonal flu rate of around 1,200 deaths.

The problem was that the World Health Organisation changed its definition of a pandemic from a threat to be likely to cause a tremendous number of deaths to one that was considered to be "severe or mild" in its threat, which is inexplicable.

The result was that billions of pounds were spent on vaccines, 80 per cent of which will not be used, which was an appalling waste of money.

The third problem was that this diverted vital resources from the health service because the focus was on this virus.

Finally, there is evidence from Australia of problems because people were unnecessarily exposed to untested vaccines.

l Paul Flynn is a member of the Council of Europe, who has drawn up a report on the swine flu pandemic.