The government was urgently seeking to ensure sufficient supplies of rabies vaccine after a multinational manufacturer withdrew stocks following production checks.
Up to 7,000 doses are being recalled in Britain following similar action in the United States and Ireland.
Aventis Pasteur has withdrawn several batches of the vaccine after routine tests suggested that the laboratory-produced virus, needed to produce a protective immune response, had not been "inactivated" in one lot.
It was unclear last night what the effect would be for travellers and others seeking vaccinations , which can cost well over £100 for a three-dose, one month, preventive course.
Although there have only been two dozen cases reported in this country since 1900, all imported bar one bat handler in Scotland in 2002, the disease kills anything between 40,000 and 70,000 people a year worldwide.
People visiting rural areas of developing countries miles from medical aid, zoologists, staff handling imported animals and bat conservationists are all recommended to have the vaccine.
The disease is nearly always fatal. People bitten by rabid animals need rapid post-exposure innoculation, usually with five doses and immunoglobulin, to stand a chance of surviving the disease.
Aventis Pasteur MSD , which supplies the drug in this country, said the move was purely precautionary and there was no evidence that any stocks being retrieved, although manufactured around the same time, had been affected in any way.
It was contacting GPs and other doctors to withdraw the vaccine.
The company's medical director, Jonathan Van-Tam, stressed that all the vaccine being recalled had already passed all the legally required production tests.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said last night that it was seeking alternative supplies from the only other UK supplier of rabies vaccine, Chiron, "to minimise any disruption".
Health advisers in the United States said it was unlikely that anyone had been exposed to live rabies vaccine, but have made recommendations to minimise the risk.
People being immunised for the first time who received vaccine from the recalled batch should receive additional doses of unrecalled vaccine for a total of five doses.
theguardian.com/medicine
