Following the recent deaths of a 17-year-old pregnant woman in Scotland and 21-year-old mum-to-be in Wales, medical experts are taking drastic action to ensure pregnant women have the vital free swine flu vaccine.
Medical workers are ensuring that up to 4.5 millions doses of the GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine Pandemrix will be available for pregnant women in just over 1 week’s time.
Swine flu victims in the UK continue to rise, with the numbers of new cases of the flu have increased to 27,000 in the last week alone, up from 18,000.
Chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson is leading the move to get the free vaccine available for all pregnant women as he believes they have higher risks of complications. “I do not want to see pregnant women dying of a preventable disease, therefore a sensible approach to reducing these risks is to get the vaccine,” he has said.
The number of swine flu deaths has reached 106, this includes 6 pregnant women. The toll nearly rose to 7 when Scottish mum, Sharon Pentleton contracted the virus, but after being transferred to a hospital in Stockholm, Sweden for life saving treatment, she went on to give birth to a healthy baby boy on Wednesday.
If you are pregnant and worried about contracting the swine flu virus, the NHS Choices have excellent guidelines to keep your worries at bay.
With the huge amount of conflicting advice going round about pregnancy and swine flu, it’s easy to get overwhelmed – so why not follow MFM’s simple swine flu guidelines for mums-to-be and get easy to follow advice.
If you are worried about the safety of vaccinations while pregnant, be reassured that it is safe to use.
