The first batch of A/H1N1 vaccines, comprising 100,000 doses, purchased by the government of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), were Saturday transported to Macao by air, and local health authorities will soon start the inoculation of these vaccines.

Local medical staff along with children, old people and patients with chronic illness, will be firstly inoculated with these vaccines, according to the SAR's Health Bureau. Other people will be inoculated when more vaccines purchased by the SAR government were delivered to Macao in January next year.

The Bureau has said that some 700,000 doses of such vaccines were scheduled to be delivered to Macao by the end of January next year.

According to the statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), over 40 countries around the world have initiated mass inoculation of A/H1N1 vaccines, and it was estimated that some 65 million people have been inoculated with around 80 million doses of such vaccines.

The vaccines purchased by Macao SAR government were produced by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, and the use of them has been approved by relevant EU authorities, said Lei Chin Ion, director of the Health Bureau, in an earlier circumstance.

He also said that the vaccine's inoculation in Macao is voluntary.

(Xinhua News Agency November 22, 2009)