A report from the US CDC claims that during the 2011-2012
influenza season, over 85 % of US doctors were immunized against the flu, which
is a terrific number.
For other health care workers, though, the numbers were not
as good.
About 78 % of nurses got a flu shot that year, which is
good but should be a lot better, I think, given that so many nurses have very
close and direct exposure to very sick patients (nurses are certainly way more
often at the bedside of sick people than doctors are).
And since the overall percentage of health care workers
who got a flu shot was roughly 66 %, that means that flu vaccines were not
taken up by a huge number of other health care workers.
In the US, everything is coloured by cost, of course, so
it could be that other health care workers just didn’t want – or have the money
to get a shot but given that flu shots are generally very cheap, it’s more
likely that a huge number of them just didn’t feel like getting a flu shot, and
that’s something that just has to change because these people are likely
(dangerous?) reservoirs for flu infection for a great number of very sick
people.
I don’t know what the numbers are up here but I think the
percentage are likely lower all around, and the consequence is that a great
number of very sick people are getting the burden of a flu infection added to
the burden of the other illnesses they are fighting, a burden that they just can’t
afford.
