Israel suspends flu vaccinations after 4 die

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

JERUSALEM, Oct 23 (Reuters) Israel suspended flu vaccinations nationwide after four men who had been inoculated died in the past week, the Health Ministry said.

''I ordered to stop the vaccinations until things are made clear,'' Israeli Health Minister Yacov Ben Yizri told reporters yesterday.

''We have started to investigate everything related to this case,'' he said. The ministry said it had asked the French firm Sanofi-Aventis, which manufactured the vaccine, to conduct its own investigation.

Hospital officials said all the men were aged 52 to 76 and had suffered from ailments including diabetes and heart disease.

''We received information of a problem that happened in one of the places in the country,'' Ben Yizri said. ''They told us that three elderly people had died after receiving the flu shot days earlier.'' The three of the four men who died had been vaccinated at the same medical centre and injected from the same vaccine pool.

They had died from cardiac arrest. The immediate cause of death of the fourth is unknown.

People aged 65 or older or those with severe heart conditions are at high risk from complications from influenza, which kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year, and are usually encouraged to be vaccinated against it.

Ben Yizri said more than 140,000 people had been vaccinated for the flu virus in Israel this year. The risk of death from such a vaccine, which contains an inactivated virus, is small.

REUTERS PDS KP0451

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