£1.2bn Cost Of Swine Flu Pandemic Revealed

Gman496

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Britain spent more than £1.2bn tackling the swine flu pandemic but the response was proportionate, an independent review has concluded.


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he report by Dame Deirdre Hine, a former chief medical officer for Wales, concluded that the UK's response to the outbreak was "effective".

However, she said Britain had been left with vaccines against the H1N1 virus which it did not need, due to the lack of flexibility in the contracts the Government signed.

The review found that Britain spent £1.01bn on drugs such as anti-virals, vaccines and antibiotics.

Around £654m of the total had been spent in advance, in preparation for a possible flu pandemic. A further £587m was spent reacting to the H1N1 outbreak.

Between April 2009 and March this year, 457 people died in the UK in cases that were reported or confirmed to be swine-flu related.

Asked if spending so much on tackling the outbreak had ended up being a waste of money, Dame Deirdre said: "I don't think you can say that at all."

She told Sky News there had been a "very robust" business case for buying the vaccine and the response was value for money.

It was not possible to precisely calculate the number of deaths prevented but said saving only a few hundred lives would offset the amount spent, she added.
 
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