Health bosses say this year’s nasal flu vaccination has been well received despite it containing pork gelatin.
Since October, school children from primary and secondary schools across the city and county have been offered a nasal flu spray following parental requests.
Some 97,000 young people are eligible for the inoculation which has still to be carried out in some places - so far 37,199 have received it.
The vaccination programme is due to finish on December 19 - the last day of the school term.
Dr Tim Davies, consultant lead for screening and immunisation and Head of Public Health Commissioning (Leicestershire and Lincolnshire) at NHS England, said: “At the end of week six of the programme 56,852 children have been offered the vaccine and 37,199 have received it, an uptake of 65 per cent. This is a good uptake for a new vaccine programme and higher than the 52 per cent that we achieved in the pilot last year.”
Last year’s programme had to be delayed when it was revealed the spray contained pork gelatin.
Parental permission to administer the spray had been requested, but a letter to parents from the trust failed to reveal what was in it.
Many children do not consume pork for religious and lifestyle reasons.
However, all parents have been given an information leaflet as part of the programme which states that the World Health Organisation consulted more than 100 Muslim scholars, who concluded gelatine used in medicines was considered transformed and therefore lawful and permissible for Muslims.
Dr Davies said: “The Fluenz immunisation spray is the best way to help protect children against the flu.
“Fluenz is safe, simple and painless, and by having the nasal spray, children are less likely to pass the virus on to friends and family. This is important as flu can be a really serious illness for some.”
He added that there were no plans to develop a new vaccine that didn’t contain pork derivatives.
“Vaccine development is a long and complicated process. Any new vaccine has to go through years of testing for effectiveness and safety before being used on humans,” he said.
“The vaccine contains the protein extracted from pork gelatin because it proved to be the best protein of a large number tested to produce an effective vaccine. There are no plans at present to create a new vaccine that does not include the gelatin product.”
Despite this, Taylor Road Primary head teacher Chris Hassall, said that of the 650 eligible children for the vaccination in his school, only 50 had taken it.
He said: “I advise parents to make sure they are fully informed before making any kind of decision, but it’s quite sad that given there are so many children who don’t want to eat pork derivatives because of their religious background or because they’re vegetarian, this hasn’t fully been taken into consideration by the health organisation developing and administering it.”
Last year only 28,652 children in the city and county received the vaccine.