Vaccination: Procurement

(asked on 15th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many suppliers there are for each vaccine on the routine immunisation schedule.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 1st July 2020

Each of the routine vaccines in the United Kingdom vaccine schedule has one supplier, with the exception of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which has two suppliers.

Where there is more than one possible supplier of a vaccine for a programme, and the vaccines are clinically equivalent and interchangeable in the schedule, a decision to source the vaccine from either single or multiple suppliers is based on the risk of an interruption to supply and the resulting impact to the programme. This includes an assessment of the manufacturing and supply chain risks and how effectively the supplier has mitigated those risks. In addition, where shelf life allows, Public Health England holds stockpiles to protect the National Health Service programmes from interruptions in supply.

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