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Published: 22 April 2010
by TOM FOOT

SCHOOLS were closed, appointments with doctors were cancelled, and hundreds of Camden residents spent days stranded in their homes waiting for “flu friends” to bring antiviral supplies.

One year on from the first outbreak of swine flu in Britain, a report has revealed how the borough’s health chiefs suffered weeks of confusion as they tried to respond to the worldwide pandemic.

The report, published by NHS Camden, shows how vaccines were “wasted” and government advice it acted on was “contradictory”. Staff, the findings suggest, were repeatedly given “inaccurate” information over collection points for antivirals.

NHS Camden acting chief executive Liz Wise said: “NHS Camden would act on one piece of information, only to have the instructions changed during the process, which resulted in operations grinding to a halt and being completely changed.”

After the first London case of swine flu was reported at University College London Hospital on April 30, a containment plan was put into action, the report says.

Confirmed sufferers and those they had come into “contact” with were given antivirals and schools were closed in an attempt to contain the problem.

But the H1N1 virus spread at an alarming rate and the response switched to one of treatment with doctors diagnosing over the phone and “flu friends” being dispatched to pick up the antivirals from three collection points in Camden.

Ms Wise told how thousands of “swab kits” – the first method of diagnosing swine flu – arrived on the day the Department of Health told NHS Camden to stop routine swab tests. 

Doctors reported surges in calls and hundreds of routine appointments had to be cancelled.

When the first British death of a swine flu patient in Glasgow was reported on July 2, the average number of Camden GP swine flu consultations rocketed by 1,000 per cent to more than 300 a day.

Ms Wise said attempts by health chiefs to “myth-bust” did not permeate the public consciousness.

But increasingly, patients realised the virus was “mild” and “no worse than normal winter flu”. Ms Wise said: “Due to lack of confidence in the vaccine a large number of people did not turn up to pre-booked appointments which resulted in a waste of resource and vaccine. “

The Department of Health measures were wildly disproportionate and “designed for a virus with a much more severe attack and mortality rate”, Ms Wise added.

In January, the number of cases fell to a level at which a decision was taken to close the National Pandemic Flu Service.