http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=134182
Doctor to make £40,000 from single MMR jabs
By Jeremy Laurance Health Editor
19 February 2002
Internal links
MMR fears
lead to six-month wait for parents seeking single vaccines
The past few weeks have been bedlam
for Dr Christopher Parry. His Tuesday afternoon clinic held in the centre of
Colchester, Essex, offering single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines to the
children of parents worried by MMR has been overwhelmed.
"They have come from Wales, from the North,
from all over. It's madness," said a receptionist at his vaccination
clinic yesterday.
His appointment book is full until the end of July
but callers were being told yesterday that a second clinic could start next
month to cope with the demand. The charge is £75 a vaccine, making £225 for the
course of three.
Parents are willing to pay the high charges because
few doctors are prepared to provide the single vaccines and they are in short
supply. The single vaccines are unlicensed in this country and must be ordered
individually on a "named patient" basis.
Dr Parry is likely to receive more than £40,000 in
gross fees from his Tuesday afternoon clinics in the next six months. His
clinic runs from 1.30pm to 6pm and he vaccinates five children an hour,
yielding a gross income of about £1,600 for the afternoon.
Dr Parry, an NHS GP, backs the MMR vaccination but
insists doctors must respond to demand. "I think MMR is safe and I have
given it to my three boys. But people are not convinced of its safety and
therefore will opt to have nothing. I think single vaccines are slightly less
safe [than MMR] but they are better than nothing."
He defended the high charges saying he had had to
hire a receptionist and a "bevy of maidens" to cope with the volume
of calls from worried parents in the past few weeks. "I started last May
doing it for a couple of afternoons a week seeing 10-15 patients an afternoon.
Now it has taken off and I am really stretched.
"If I am accused of cashing in I would say I
cashed in on it well before the latest hullabaloo – and the driving force has
been the refusal of parents to have MMR. I could be accused of cashing in but I
am offering a pretty sensible service."
Dr Parry said he obtained his vaccine supplies from
IDIS World Medicines in Surbiton, Surrey. There had been a hiccup in the supply
but he was expecting fresh vaccine to be available next week. IDIS was not returning
calls yesterday.
For his own NHS patients, Dr Parry said he would
administer the single vaccines without charge, but they would have to obtain
the vaccines themselves. "I would advise them to have MMR but if they say
no, and put it in writing then I would give them a private prescription to take
to the chemist. I would never dream of denying my NHS patients a service I was
happy to provide privately."
A spokeswoman for Boots said that a patient with a
private prescription for measles or mumps vaccine would have to have it ordered
individually, and the cost would be £50 to £60 for each vaccine. Rubella
vaccine is licensed, because it is given to pregnant women, and would be
"much cheaper", the spokeswoman said.
In Louth, Lincolnshire, Dr Peter Mansfield's
"Good Healthkeeping" clinic had been inundated with 10,000 calls a
day, a receptionist said yesterday. There are eight staff taking calls and the
single vaccine clinic, which runs on Mondays, Tuesday and Thursdays, is fully
booked until April.
Dr Mansfield, an energetic proselytiser for single
vaccines, was reported to the General Medical Council last year by the local
director of public health for setting up a clinic in Worcestershire but the
charges were later dropped.
Also from the Health
section.
Rise in national insurance of £4bn may be
unveiled to boost NHS
Top doctor wants more MMR tests to
satisfy parents
Pregnant women should eat fish weekly to
raise baby's birth weight, says study
Feeling poorly? Go out and mow that lawn
Obese adolescent children hit by 'adult'
diabetes
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