Targeting children for vaccination may be the best way of using limited supplies of vaccine to control the current H1N1 flu pandemic.
Drugmakers are racing to make a vaccine against the new flu strain but if the disease increases significantly in the northern hemisphere autumn, as many experts fear, there are unlikely to be enough stocks of vaccines for entire populations.
According to researchers from UK vaccinating children rather than adults would not only help protect a group at greatest risk of exposure to the virus, but would also offer protection to unvaccinated adults. This so-called herd immunity effect would mean significantly less vaccine would be needed to help control the spread of the novel H1N1 Influenza virus.
The researchers models suggest that the larger the household - which in most cases means more children living at home - the more likely the infection will spread. This doesn't mean that everyone in the household needs to be vaccinated but suggests that vaccination programmes for children might help control a potential pandemic.