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Flu Shots Available Now ; Officials Trying to Get More Health Workers Vaccinated This Year

Posted on: Thursday, 13 October 2005, 12:00 CDT

By JACKIE JADRNAK Journal Staff Writer

Maybe you're worried about avian influenza, that "bird flu" that might turn into a raging pandemic among humans.

But what are you doing about the common, garden-variety flu that we all know will spur aches, fevers and coughing as cold weather sets in? The annual visitor is nothing to sneeze at, as it kills about 36,000 people in this country each year.

Now is the time to get a flu shot if you're at high risk of complications from the disease. After Oct. 24, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is opening vaccination to anyone who wants one.

Vaccine supplies look good this year, according to C. Mack Sewell, state epidemiologist. That's a change from last year, when early shortages led to long lines.

State officials are paying special attention this year to getting health care workers vaccinated. In a classic example of "do as I say, not as I do," only up to 40 percent of those workers nationally got vaccinated last year. New Mexico's percentage was closer to 53 percent.

Those workers are in close contact with the sickest and most vulnerable patients, who can develop complications or even die from a bout with the flu.

"You can be contagious to other people a day before you feel sick," said Dr. Susan Kellie, epidemiologist at the University of New Mexico Hospital. "And you can continue to shed the virus for several days after the illness is over."

In other words, staying home when they're sick isn't enough to prevent health care workers from infecting their patients.

As if they stay home. "Many health care workers work while they're sick," Kellie said.

Judy Schmidt, a nurse and public health educator, called health care workers' immunization rate "really pathetic." Based with the CDC's National Immunization Program in Atlanta, Schmidt was in Albuquerque this week to talk to health care workers.

When she hears excuses about why they don't think they need the shots -- they're really healthy; they won't get sick -- Schmidt said she has a ready answer: "Honey, it's not for you. It's for the people around you."

Recent studies have suggested the best way to stop the spread of flu might be to vaccinate preschoolers and schoolkids, a population that is targeted in Japan. "Data show young children particularly are spreaders of infection," Sewell sa c should be modified."

That possibility will be discussed in a couple of weeks at a national meeting in Atlanta, he added.

At UNM Hospital, walk-in shot clinics will be available in the workplace, Kellie said. Roving clinics will visit different units at night to encourage workers to get shots.

A system to scan employee IDs will track who has been vaccinated, so special efforts lie said.

The state Department of Health also will send surveys to nursing homes for feedback on how many workers are getting shots there, Sewell said. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency, this year is requiring that residents of long-term care facilities get a flu shot.

Last year, influenza broke out in a couple of New Mexico nursing homes that had low levshow vaccination rates of the staff actually leads to lower mortality than if you just vaccinate the residents," he said.

Some people have suggested employers should make flu shots mandatory for health care workers. The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine came out in opposition to such an approach this year. It argued that such a requirement would strain employee-employer relationships, may not increase

Source: Albuquerque Journal

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