A small group of people receive financial compensation because they have become ill after being vaccinated against swine flu. State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen wrote to the House of Representatives that the State does not admit liability, because the causal link between the vaccination and the disease has not been established. Therefore, there is no question of full compensation.
But a settlement has been reached about an allowance, because it concerns exceptionally serious neurological complaints in young children. The case has been going on for years and previous cabinets had already allocated money for it.
According to Van Ooijen, a “careful process was followed”, with experts, parents and children. Another factor is that benefits have been and are being paid in other European countries as well.
Narcolepsy
In 2009, about 5 million people in the Netherlands were vaccinated against swine flu, a serious flu that can be deadly. The vaccinees included 600,000 children. A number of children later developed the serious and chronic sleep disorder narcolepsy. This is a rare disorder in the brain that can cause the patient to fall asleep at any time. Whether the disease was caused by the vaccination or by some other cause was not certain.
23 people held the State liable. In a number of those cases it has been established that a “causal relationship cannot be ruled out”. A pediatric neurologist calculated high rates of permanent disability (between 34 and 74 percent). “The general impression among these children is that they are severely limited by narcolepsy in all areas of life,” writes Van Ooijen in his letter.
Because of the privacy of this limited group, the State Secretary does not want to say how many people will receive money or how high the amounts will be.
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