The health ministry has failed in its efforts to sell 19 million unwanted doses of swine flu vaccine to another country and is now seeking to sell them back to the manufacturers.

A spokeswoman for the ministry told Reuters news agency it had approached manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis about buying back the doses.
The Netherlands bought 34 doses of the vaccine for H1N1 at the height of the scare, enough for two shots per person.

Unused

But only young children, the elderly and some categories of workers were vaccinated, leaving 19 doses of vaccine million unused.
Other European countries, such as Germany, Britain and Belgium are negotiating with drugs manufacturers to have their orders reduced.
Cyprus and Malta have bought 280,000 doses of the surplus drug, the NRC said on Saturday.

Death toll
By the beginning of March, In total, 58 people in the Netherlands had died of swine flu, or variant H1N1, and 2200 people had been taken to hospital. The government had been expecting up to 10,000 deaths from the virus.
In January, Wolfgang Wodarg, health director at the Council of Europe, accused the makers of flu drugs and vaccines of influencing the World Health Organisation’s decision to declare swine flu pandemic.
This led to the pharmaceutical firms ensuring ‘enormous gains’, with millions being vaccinated against a relatively mild disease, he said.
In the Netherlands, it emerged last year that the country’s chief virologist Ab Osterhaus, who advised the government to buy a double dose of the vaccine, has close links to drugs firms. He denied any conflict of interest.