Hospitals temporarily suspend tuberculosis vaccinations for newborn babies

Vaccine found to lose potency faster than expected

All Finnish maternity hospitals were ordered to stop vaccinating newborn babies for tuberculosis on Thursday.

    The move comes after it was noticed that the bacteria content in the vaccine produced by the British company Evans Vaccines Ltd. had declined faster than expected.

    The effectiveness of the vaccine is based on weakened strains of the Bacillus-Calmette-Guérin bacteria, which are similar to those of tuberculosis and help the body build up an immunity to the deadly pulmonary disease.

    According to European Union regulations a dose of tuberculosis vaccine must contain two million live bacteria during the two years that it is considered viable. In some of the lots the live bacteria content went below the limit already after just a year and a half of storage.

 

In Finland newborn infants are vaccinated for tuberculosis already at the age of about two days if the child weighs at least two and a half kilos and if the parents do not object.

    Alongside Finland, Ireland and Portugal are the only EU countries which practice routine tuberculosis vaccination of newborn babies. In most other countries vaccinations are given only to those babies considered to be in a high-risk group.

 

The suspension of vaccinations is only expected to last about two weeks, as new vaccine has already been ordered from Denmark.

    Tapani Kuronen of the National Public Health Institute says that a slight decline in the number of bacteria in a vaccination does not make it ineffective. He notes that even with a lower bacteria content the vaccine will give the ten-year protection that is sought after, and that there is no reason to give new jabs to children who have been recently vaccinated.

    When the new vaccine arrives in Finland, babies born in the interim can get their shots either at the hospital where they were born, or at a baby clinic.

 

Finland plans to continue routine vaccination of newborns for tuberculosis, even though the practice has been abandoned in almost all industrialised countries.

    A few years ago a committee examining the need for vaccinations proposed that the practice should be dropped in Finland as well. However, the vaccinations have been seen as necessary in Finland, in part, because of the occasional outbreaks of tuberculosis in parts of Russia adjacent to Finland.

    Booster shots for schoolchildren and health care personnel were stopped in the 1980s.