A small group who fell ill after being vaccinated against swine flu (H1N1) in 2009 will receive money from the State. After the injection, they developed narcolepsy: a disease in which patients unexpectedly fall asleep during the day. It is still not certain that the jab caused these complaints, but the cabinet has reached a settlement.
The State admits no liability, because a direct link between the vaccination and narcolepsy has not been proven. The complaints arose within thirteen months after the vaccination. According to the experts who advised the ministry, a causal relationship is “unlikely, but not completely excluded”.
The cabinet has reached a settlement with the patients “because of the irreversibility of the exceptionally serious neurological complaints in these young children”, states Secretary of State Maarten van Ooijen (Public Health).
This mainly concerns young children who developed severe brain complaints and became disabled as a result. Patients had received Pandemrix or Focetria vaccines. At the end of 2014, the State and the vaccine manufacturers were formally held liable for the development of narcolepsy in 23 children who were vaccinated in 2009 with one of the two drugs. They would have informed people too little about possible side effects. Some of those 23 patients are now being compensated.
In 2018, the government made 5 million euros available as compensation for people who were vaccinated as children and subsequently developed narcolepsy. Patients in other European countries were also compensated.
H1N1 first emerged in Mexico in 2009. The disease was initially also called swine flu. In June 2009, the WHO declared the disease a pandemic, which officially ended a year later. A vaccine was already available in the summer of 2009. According to scientific research 1 in 18,400 vaccinees had an increased risk of narcolepsy.
