The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has backed the government's call for community pharmacists to be vaccinated against flu.  

RPS head of policy Heidi Wright said on Friday (September 26) that pharmacists working with patients should ensure they were vaccinated, in response to the government's call for "urgent support" to increase uptake among all frontline health and social care workers.  

The RPS had no way of knowing how many pharmacists had received the jab as they were not required to report it, Ms Wright told C+D. 

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	Vaccination coverage among healthcare workers had remained "disappointingly" low over the past few years and had reached only 46 per cent last year, according to a letter sent to healthcare workers, including community pharmacists, from the Department of Health (DH), Public Health England and NHS England last week (September 25).

Healthcare workers had a duty of care to their patients and had to do everything in their power to protect them from infection, it said.  

In its flu immunisation programme for 2013-14, published in August, the DH said that all employers needed to ensure vaccinations were available free of charge to employees if a risk assessment indicated they were needed.  

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt announced in September that the government would withhold a share of the £250 million A&E funding from NHS health trusts who did not get at least three quarters of their staff vaccinated.