By Kent Atkinson of NZPA

Wellington, March 8 NZPA - Health officials are calling for pregnant women to get a seasonal flu "jab" in the next few weeks, in case of an early resurgence of swine flu.

Pandemic swine flu -- the H1N1 influenza which spread to New Zealand immediately after it broke out in Mexico and United States last year -- has been included in the 2010 seasonal influenza vaccine.

In previous years, medical experts have not pushed hard for pregnant women to get the jab, because of a risk that a natural incidence of miscarriages in early pregnancy would be blamed on vaccinations.

But today a senior adviser at the Health Ministry, Dr Nikki Turner, told NZPA the ministry "strongly recommends" that women who will be pregnant during the flu season have a seasonal immunisation.

The evidence over the past year was that pregnant women infected with the pandemic swine flu had a greater risk of experiencing a more serious illness.

And women who were pregnant and had a pre-existing medical condition were likely to have an even higher chance of developing a more severe illness, Dr Turner said.

Public health director Dr Mark Jacobs warned today people need to be immunised as soon as possible because it took up to two weeks to develop immunity after vaccination, but swine flu may return to New Zealand in a "second wave" as early as the end of March or early April.

Dr Turner said the flu jab would benefit both mother and baby, because vaccinated mothers could pass protection on to the foetus, to cover it for the first six months after birth, when infants are too young for an individual vaccination.

In China, the director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, Zhong Nanshan, is reported to have said it was "not advisable" for those who are less than three months pregnant to receive any vaccinations, including H1N1.

Dr Zhong said stillbirths and miscarriages could happen easily in the first three months of pregnancy.

But Dr Turner said women in their first trimester of pregnancy had high rates of miscarriage irrespective of whether or not they had been immunised.

"There will be cases where a pregnant woman, in her first trimester has the seasonal influenza vaccine and subsequently has a miscarriage," she said. "This does not mean the vaccine caused the miscarriage."

Around 15-20 percent of pregnancies ended in miscarriage and about 80 percent of them occurred before 12 weeks.

"Because of this, historically, medical experts have been reluctant to recommend vaccination, not because of concerns that the vaccine causes the miscarriage, but because the vaccine gets implicated when a miscarriage occurs," she said.

Last year's pandemic had showed that pregnant women in any stage of pregnancy were at higher risk of complications from influenza.

"This has strengthened the New Zealand immunisation technical forum advice to immunise in any stage of pregnancy," said Dr Turner.

The call for flu jabs for pregnant women was backed by international evidence which showed no evidence of harm to the fetus from immunisation of pregnant women using influenza inactivated viral vaccines.

Vaccinations are free from March to the end of June for New Zealanders aged 65 and over, or younger people with long-term health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, cancers or respiratory disease (including asthma). People who are pregnant, or severely obese also qualify this year. Doctors may also list some children, within six months of their fifth birthday, for a free vaccination.

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