„Es ist unter dem Radar verschwunden“: Leitender Arzt warnt davor, die RSV-Impfung für Babys zu kürzen

This is madness. RSV isn’t just a cold I’ve seen what it can do to a vulnerable adult. The thought of babies being left exposed to that risk is horrifying, especially when hospitalisations can be preventable.

>It estimates that at current drug prices, a full rollout for infants and older adults over 80 would cost €60 million for the former category for the first five years, and around €70 million for the latter.

>HIQA ultimately said that unless the HSE can get a much better price, offering immunisation to infants or older adults on a long-term basis “would not be an efficient use of resources”.

The costs sound astronomical but I’d imagine you’re actually on the brink of breakeven when you think of how much beds and man hours you can free up, as well as improved patient outcomes and the fact that thousands of your population don’t have a bad dose where the bad dose for them is really bad.

We need to have a conversation about drug costs though. I always think a single EU buyer for medicines would help bring a lot of this down, and we need to onshore a lot of medicine production to the EU or at least to Europe.