Access to meningococcal B vaccine and supply of shingles vaccine

OIA response

Thank you for your request dated 17 November 2022 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to access to meningococcal B vaccine and supply of shingles vaccine. You requested: 

Copies of Pharmac’s evidence, expert advice/reports/recommendation and risk/benefit documents relating to the Proposal to widen access to the meningococcal B vaccine and secure supply of the shingles vaccine. 

We are pleased to provide you with the information you requested attached to this letter. 

Please note that we approach our assessment of requests for information under the OIA on the basis that once we release the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party). 

We have redacted a small amount of information from the documents as we consider this is necessary to:

  • protect the privacy of natural persons, including that of deceased natural persons (section 9(2)(a));
  • protect information where the making available of the information would be likely to unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the subject of the information (section 9(2)(b)(ii));
  • protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence or which any person has been or could be compelled to provide under the authority of any enactment, where the making available of the information would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public interest that such information should continue to be supplied (section 9(2)(ba)(i));
  • to maintain legal professional privilege (section 9(2)(h));
  • enable Pharmac to carry on, without prejudice or disadvantage, negotiations, including commercial negotiations (section 9(2)(j)).

As required under the OIA, we also considered whether, in the circumstances, the withholding of this information was outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make this information available. In this case we did not consider that the public interest outweighed the reasons for withholding the information. 

Please note, you have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman about our response to your OIA, under section 28(3) of the OIA. Details of how to make a complaint(external link) are on the Ombudsman’s website. 

We trust that this information answers your queries. To make information more freely available, we publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website.

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.