Swine Flu Vaccines Dumped in Africa

Wednesday, September 15, 2010 by: Fleur Hupston
Tags: vaccines, swine flu, health news

(NewsTarget) It was recently announced that as much as 43% of the U.S. swine flu vaccine supply would ultimately go unused and be destroyed. Apparently, the stance then taken by the major drug companies and the World Health Organization was to incinerate quantities of the vaccine and/or dump as much of the H1N1 vaccine supply as they possibly could in Africa.

According to Associated Press, in July 2010 about 40 million doses of the total supply produced by the US to cope with the swine flu outbreak had already expired and would be incinerated by public health authorities. This loss represents millions of US dollars. In the face of such losses, selling/dumping the excess to developing countries was apparently a tempting option. After all, the people of Africa don't need to know that the timing is off by a year and, in any case, they should be grateful to get "valuable" swine flu vaccines at a cheaper rate, even if they don't need them.

No Swine Flu Pandemic in Africa

According to the Swine Flu Watch, at the height of the "pandemic" in 2009, very few cases of swine flu was recorded in sub-Saharan African countries. For example, Botswana reported 20 cases; Zimbabwe confirmed 40 cases, Mozambique 55 and Angola 35. Similarly, low figures were reported for swine flu in other African countries, with the exception of South Africa, where 12500 cases were reported over the same period.

Global Swine Flu "Pandemic" Winds Down - Except in Africa

Sometime towards the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, the World Heath Organization realized that there was going to be a problem with getting rid of the "soon to expire" H1N1 vaccines. After all, the "pandemic" was winding down. What to do with all those vaccines? At this point, it is interesting to note that Wellness Blogs links three of the scientists who advised the international health body on swine flu protocol with ties to the pharmaceutical companies that manufactured the vaccines.

And so it was that in March 2010 The World Health Organization announced that it would deliver millions of H1N1 vaccine doses to about a dozen countries in Africa in the weeks to come. This was despite their own website reporting very low occurrences of swine flu in Africa. In fact, the WHO regional office for Africa reported only 157 cases of Swine Flu by the end of July 2009, compared to the 87000 cases reported by their American office.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the pandemic ended on 10 August 2010. However, just a few weeks earlier, various African governments started making H1N1 vaccinations available to their citizens. It would seem that while the rest of the world was announcing the end of the swine flu epidemic, Africa started gearing up for mass inoculations of her people. The Botswana government, for example, embarked on their mass vaccination campaign between 21st June 2010 and the end of August 2010.

Sources:

http://www.internationalsos.com
http://wellness.blogs.time.com
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statemen...
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread....
http://www.gov.bw/en/News/Influenza-A-H1N1-v...

About the author

Fleur Hupston is a professional freelance writer. She is passionate about natural, healthy living and is currently studying to be a naturopath. She divides her time between writing for Natural News and various other sites, home schooling her children and studying part time.