European health ministers are set to hold an emergency inquiry into whether pharmaceutical companies influenced government decisions to purchase vast stockpiles of unnecessary swine flu vaccines. The inquiry comes as European governments have announced they are being forced to sell the millions of excess doses they ordered from the companies during the height of the Swine Flu Panic.This week Gerrmany, France and the Netherlands announced they would sell the excess H1N1 drug supplies they purchased. The revelations about how much those governments spent on the vaccine has caused a public outcry, particularly in France. The country had placed orders to spend €869 million on 94 million vaccine doses, even though the population of France is 65 million. Only 5 million French people have been vaccinated. On Monday the country announced it wanted to cancel 50 million of those orders. The UK is also in talks to cancel orders for an estimated 20 million doses of vaccine, though the government won’t reveal the total size of what it ordered.
