A $2-billion campaign to protect Canadians against an influenza pandemic failed dramatically in parts of Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta, newly obtained figures show, with one of the country's top doctors acknowledging that public health officials neglected to properly organize a mass immunization program.

Just over a third of residents in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario were inoculated against H1N1, with a vaccination rate as low as one in four for residents of Hamilton, Ont., according to local health authorities. Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and the three territories, meanwhile, successfully inoculated more than half of their citizens. Newfoundland vaccinated about 70 per cent of its population.

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