New York City will buy 200,000 doses of flu vaccine from two European drug companies to help meet its need for 1.4 million doses for elderly and high- risk residents, Mayor Bloomberg said.

The purchases – 100,000 doses each from a German factory of British company GlaxoSmithKline and from Aventis Pasteur of France – were arranged in partnership with Governor Blagojevich of Illinois, who has been active since 2003 in seeking to import low-cost drugs from Canada and Europe for Illinois public workers.

The purchases, costing $10 a dose, must be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has agreed to inspect the manufacturing plants and to rule on an application that would admit the vaccines for use in the U.S. as investigational new drugs, Mr. Blagojevich said during a conference call with Mr. Bloomberg.

The city’s health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, said the vaccines are “identical” to those currently in use in the America. The extra doses would “allow virtually every high-risk New York City resident who wants a flu shot to be vaccinated,” a press release said.

In Washington, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman, Lenore Gelb, said the agency “is working actively and diligently with the state of Illinois to determine how the unlicensed flu vaccines it has identified can be legally and safely distributed.”

The city’s opportunity to buy the vaccine arose after the mayor’s office learned of Mr. Blagojevich’s efforts and contacted him in Illinois. Mr. Blagojevich, through contacts his administration has developed seeking drug imports from abroad, bought about 300,000 doses for Illinois.

The shortage arose in October after British authorities suspended production of the vaccine at a Liverpool, England, plant of Chiron Corp., based in Emeryville, Calif., because of contamination problems. The doses New York is purchasing come from an Aventis plant in France. The supply reduction left the city short of what it would need to protect its most vulnerable residents: the elderly and people with heart disease, diabetes, AIDS, and other illnesses that might affect their immune systems.

Mr. Bloomberg said the 200,000 new doses from Europe would be enough to supply almost everyone in those categories, after the city had received or been promised 900,000 other doses from Aventis Pasteur and 275,000 doses from the federal government.

“Given this year’s shortage, it’s very important that the vaccine go to those of us who are most at risk,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We appreciate very much New Yorkers’ willingness to forego flu shots so the city’s most vulnerable people can get theirs.”

Mr. Frieden said so far this year four people have died in New York City from flu in two nursing home outbreaks and 14 have been hospitalized, all of them elderly. He said that for those who have no underlying medical conditions, the flu would be a “nuisance, but in people over 65 it can be deadly.” He said the new vaccine had already met safety standards set by European regulators.