H1N1 Vaccine Availability: Acute Based Outpatient Services

Beginning Friday, October 30th, outpatient clinics that serve clients who meet the following criteria can request vaccine through their hospital pharmacy:

• Individuals under age 65 living with a chronic disease
• Pregnant women in their second half of pregnancy (20+ weeks)

The hospital pharmacy will request vaccine from their local public health unit.

The hospital pharmacy will batch requests from multiple outpatient services when ordering from the public health unit.

The hospital pharmacy must make arrangements to pick the vaccine up at the local health unit.

Because of limited vaccine supply, only a portion of requested doses may be available when requested and/or there may be a delay in receiving supply.

Once reconstituted, a ten dose vial of vaccine must be used within 24 hours. To reduce vaccine wastage, it is optimal to vaccinate at least 10 people within a 24 hour period; if possible, consider contacting additional eligible clients to facilitate multiple vaccinations at a single clinic to avoid wastage.