Pharmacy leaders have called for a greater role for community pharmacy in flu vaccination as the government extends the NHS programme to children.

The government would face difficulties in delivering the wider vaccination programme – estimated to include 9 million children – under the current system, they warned. And they argued that pharmacy was "ideally placed" to help vaccinate all children within the proposed six to eight-week period.

Last week, the government said it faced "significant challenges" in delivering its plan to offer the flu vaccine to all children aged two to 17 years, and estimated it would roll out  by 2014 "at the very earliest".

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	Draft minutes from a meeting of the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation – an independent body that advises the government on the plans – identified concerns that there were "too few" school nurses to immunise children. The committee discussed whether GPs or lay persons could deliver the vaccine, but failed to mention pharmacists.

Numark director of pharmacy services Mimi Lau argued that pharmacists could help immunise children where there were not enough school nurses. "Last year, we saw a few of our members having great success in vaccinating children in independent schools," she said.

The comments were echoed by the Independent Pharmacy Federation, which said the government would find it "difficult" to roll out its programme without involving other providers. "The reality is that GPs can't do it all and neither should they," argued chief executive Claire Ward.

And Pharmacy Voice said pharmacists were "ideally placed" to deliver the vaccine, having received "overwhelmingly positive" feedback on private immunisation schemes.

"The scale of the task of vaccinating adults [on the NHS] is already considerable, with targets in some areas not achieved," said Pharmacy Voice chief executive Rob Darracott. "We hope the NHS will take the opportunity to reflect on the need to engage a wider provider base in the vaccination programme overall."