GP COMMUNICATION – NHS England North Midlands

IMMUNISATION AND VACCINATION UPDATE

September 2015

Please cascade to ALL relevant staff

Seasonal Flu – For Information/Action

Vaccination uptake data will be collected for the following groups:

  • Patients aged 65 years and older
  • Patients in a clinical risk group as defined by the Green Book
  • Pregnant women
  • All children aged two to six years
  • Carers

The survey will comprise of:

  • Weekly automated collections from a large sentinel group of GP practices to allow almost ‘real time’ monitoring of the programme at a national level from week 36 (ending 6 September 2015) to week 4 (ending 25 January 2016).
  • Four ‘all practice’ monthly surveys (i.e. automatic and manual submissions) on vaccinations up to end October, November and December 2015 and January 2016 to provide more complete data. These more complete data allow assessment of the progress of programmes locally.

Automated data will only be collected from GP practices whose suppliers have the capability to extract data automatically. We anticipate the following suppliers will participate:

  • EMIS Web
  • INPS (Vision)
  • TPP (SystmOne)
  • Microtest

GP IT Suppliers have seven working days from the start of the monthly survey to submit their data, GP Practices have 9 working days and Area teams have 11 working days. If you do not have automated upload facility, please discuss with your IT supplier to ensure you submit your data manually.

A user guide should be issued shortly.

Flu vaccination resources 2015/16 – FOR INFORMATION

Patient information leaflets for the flu vaccination programme are now on the Annual Flu Programme pages on Gov.uk. These include: flu, your pregnancy and you, protecting your child against flu, helping stop you getting the flu: information for people with learning disabilities; and template letters for GP practices and healthcare workers delivering the vaccination through schools. Hard copies are available to order through the DH Orderline or by phoning 0300 123 1002 and quoting the reference numbers on the back pages.

The above materials have been made available now, in addition to resources for schools published in May, to allow healthcare professionals to plan for the vaccination of eligible groups from October. In addition, the Winter Marketing Campaign 2015/16 incorporates flu vaccination and materials for the campaign will be made available in late September.

Online Flu Training Resources

A new interactive flu immunisation elearning programme has been written by PHE, and produced by Health Education England’s eLearning for Healthcare (e-LfH) (see ).

The programme consists of a core knowledge and accompanying assessment session, followed by knowledge and assessment sessions on the live and inactivated flu vaccines. After completing the core knowledge session, practitioners can choose to complete one or both of the vaccine specific sessions depending on which session(s) is relevant to their role. This programme has been made ‘Open access’ for everyone so that those not employed by the NHS, or eligible to register for e-LfH learning programmes, will also be able to undertake the programme if they wish to.

In addition, two training slide sets – one for the national flu programme and one specifically focusing on the childhood flu programme – are available at with updated childhood flu programme Q&As (entitled ‘Information for healthcare practitioners’).

Men ACWY – For Information/Action

The MenACWY vaccine MENVEO is available to order for the school year 13 catch-up and older university entrants (aged 19 -24 years) programmes only.

Ordering for the routine adolescent programme (school years 9/10) is not yet open. As this vaccine comes as apack of 5 doses colleagues are urged to be cautious when placing orders to avoid over ordering. There is an initial order cap of 5 packs (25 doses of Menveo per week) per account to prevent over stocking.
Additional patient information leaflets (PILs) will be supplied with each pack of five vaccines ordered. Please discard the PIL in the pack and use only the additional PILs which have been provided.
Due to the speed with which the MenACWY programme is being implemented, PHE is holding less vaccine buffer stock than would usually be the case for a national programme. This has increased the likelihood of periods of unavailability, but PHE are working to ensure that the supply disruption is minimised as quickly as possible and will provide regular updates through bulletins/Immform and Vaccine update.

MenB – Important Information

Ordering for sachets of infant paracetamol

A limited volume of paracetamol packs are available to order through ImmForm with a cap of 1 pack per order per week.

Each pack contains 12 sachets of liquid paracetamol, 12 oral syringes and 20 “using paracetamol” leaflets.

Paracetamol sachets should only be offered to parents if they do not have paracetamol at home and they can’t buy any on their way home from the immunisation appointment. Paracetamol will only be available for the first year of the programme. Parents will then be expected to purchase their own.

Guidance on the offer of paracetamol sachets can be found at:

Guidance: MenB vaccine and paracetamol

Eligibility

Eligibility is based on the child’s date of birth. Babies should only receive the Men B vaccination if they are born on or after 1st May 2015.

All the information you require with regards to the new Meningococcal programmes can be found at:

Shingles – For Information

Due to the confusion which exists this year around who is eligible for shingles vaccination in 2015/16, PHE have produced a useful easy to follow poster which is available via the following link:

You can also use the ‘Shingles Calculator’ ( to assess eligibility for the applicable years programme.

Announcing the launch of the MenACWY vaccination programme, this issue focuses on the resources that have been produced to support this programme and the MenB and flu vaccination programmes, as well as covering a wide range of vaccine supply topics.

View the latest issue of Vaccine update here

New Immunisation Coordinators - For Information

The screening and Immunisation Team have two new immunisation coordinators.

Amanda Taylor will be covering Nottinghamshire. Her contact details are;

Office: 0113 8250689

Mobile: 07918336082

Alison Campbell will be covering Derbyshire. Her contact details are;

Office: 0113 8255505

Mobile: 07721231702

Please use Amanda and Alison as your first point of contact for any immunisation queries you have about the national immunisation programmes. Thank you!

Screening and Immunisation Team, NHS England, (North Midlands)

Sarah Mayfield, Screening and Immunisation Manager m: 07918368418

Nikki Henson, Screening and Immunisation Manager m: 07972194593

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