Vaccine Damage Payment

The Vaccine Damage Payment is a provision of the welfare state in the United Kingdom that provides a substantial payment for people who can show that they have suffered a vaccine injury.

Description

The Vaccine Damage Payment program was created in 1979 to provide significant payment to people who are severely disabled as a result of vaccinations against certain diseases.[1] It is a statutory program, and it is not necessary to demonstrate negligence in order to qualify.

Between 1997 and 2005, the government of the United Kingdom paid £3.5m, in 35 payments of £100,000 each, to patients who were left disabled by vaccinations.[2] An FOI to The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was made in 2019. The DWP’s response states that up until May 2019 £74,690,000 has been paid out from the fund, and 941 claims have been successful.[3]

Qualifications

To qualify for the program, a person must be severely disabled as a result of a vaccination, and the disablement must be assessed as at least 60%. The state will still pay even if the vaccination was not administered by them. Additionally, a person can still qualify if a vaccine against one of the diseases listed below was administered to the claimant's mother while the mother was pregnant. The claimant may also qualify if they have been in close physical contact with someone who had an oral vaccine against poliomyelitis.

The vaccination must have been for one of the following diseases:

The vaccination must also have been administered before the claimant's 18th birthday, unless the vaccination was administered during an outbreak of disease in the United Kingdom or the Isle of Man, or if it was a vaccine for poliomyelitis, rubella, Meningococcal Group C, human papillomavirus, or pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 (swine flu). The vaccination must have been administered in the United Kingdom or the Isle of Man, or as part of Armed Forces medical treatment.

In 2018, the Department of Health and Social Care conceded that the age restriction wrongly excluded adults from the program.[4][5]

See also

References
  1. Krishna, Rachael. "This FOI about vaccines is real". Full Fact. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
  2. "£3.5m paid out in vaccine damages". BBC News. 16 March 2005. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  3. Krishna, Rachael. "This FOI about vaccines is real". Full Fact. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
  4. "DHSC admits it was wrong to block vaccine compensation". Health Service Journal. 19 March 2018. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
  5. "Government agrees to rethink vaccination compensation age-bar after admitting equality rule breach". HJA London Lawyers. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.