Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Health­care work­ers, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty work­ers and what was de­scribed as "es­sen­tial de­ci­sion-mak­ers," such as Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, would be among the first in T&T to re­ceive In­fluen­za A/H1N1 (swine flu) vac­cines to­mor­row, Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace has said.

Narace con­firmed that the first batch of 50,000 vac­cines for the virus ar­rived in the coun­try ear­li­er in the week. He said an­oth­er batch of 20,000 vac­cines would be shipped to T&T on Tues­day. Narace said so at yes­ter­day's open­ing of the pe­di­atric out­pa­tient clin­ic at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. T&T was re­port­ed to be the first Caribbean is­land to re­ceive 50,000 dos­es val­ued at US$7.50 each from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Pa­ho). Narace said the de­liv­ery of more than 200,000 vac­cines was al­so an­tic­i­pat­ed in the fol­low­ing weeks. He made an ap­peal for mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­frain from seek­ing the vac­cines at lo­cal health cen­tres.

He stressed that the Min­istry of Health col­lab­o­rat­ed with the pri­vate health sec­tor and oth­er au­thor­i­ties to iden­ti­fy the pri­or­i­ty groups for the vac­cines' dis­tri­b­u­tion. He said of­fi­cials from his min­istry would ap­proach all groups for prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tion of the vac­cines through its Ex­pand­ed Pro­gramme on Im­mu­ni­sa­tion. Narace ex­plained that the first phase of the vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tion would oc­cur in three stages in both T&T. "The first batch of the In­fluen­za A/H1N1 vac­cines has ar­rived and we have tak­en pos­ses­sion of it," he said. "Vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion will start from Sun­day (to­mor­row), so that ad­min­is­tra­tion can start by Mon­day. This marks Phase I of vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tion, as we ex­pect to be re­ceiv­ing more vac­cines in the days and weeks ahead." For the sec­ond round, Narace said vac­cines would be ad­min­is­tered to preg­nant women and chil­dren be­tween the ages of two and five years.

He added that these peo­ple would not have to go in­to the health­care clin­ics for the sole pur­pose of get­ting the vac­cine, be­cause it would be ad­min­is­tered to them at their next sched­uled vis­its. Ac­cord­ing to Narace, oth­er high-risk groups such as peo­ple with chron­ic res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions, chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and im­mune sys­tem con­di­tions would re­ceive the vac­cines at health­care fa­cil­i­ties for the third round of its dis­tri­b­u­tion.