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Doctors have been told to issue the swine flu vaccine to deplete the Government's stockpile before millions of doses expire.
Australia's chief health officer, Prof Jim Bishop, will write to doctors this week urging them to "redouble efforts" to vaccinate as many patients as possible.
But critics say that there is no legitimate medical reason to mass vaccinate against a flu that has proven to be far less serious than first feared.
The Federal Government is committed to buying 21 million doses of the vaccine from manufacturer CSL, but the take-up rate has been slower than hoped.
GPs admit they are doing opportunistic vaccinations to avoid wasting the vaccine, which comes in multi-dose vials that need to be thrown out after 24 hours. Patients who present with food poisoning or a routine blood test are leaving with a swine flu jab.
Medical researcher Prof Nikolai Petrovsky said the Government was pushing the vaccine to save face. "There's no point in overselling it, which maybe they're doing to justify the fact they've wasted maybe $100 million or more on a vaccine they don't need," he said.