Doctors and nurses urged to get flu shots

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Doctors and nurses urged to get flu shots

Updated Mon. Dec. 1 2008 9:03 AM ET

The Canadian Press

TORONTO -- Canada's chief public health officer took aim at health-care

professionals who refuse to get flu shots on Sunday, suggesting those who press

the public to get vaccinated against diseases ought to do so themselves.

Dr. - made the comments at the Canadian Immunization

Conference, a gathering of public health practitioners and researchers staged

annually by the Public Health Agency of Canada, in collaboration with public

health groups.

" We even have difficulty getting more than 50 per cent of doctors and nurses to

be immunized against the flu. Yet it's usually us who take it (influenza) into

the nursing home or the hospital and then spread it from person to person,

effectively killing some of those that we're caring for, " - said.

" I think it should be obvious that those who we rely on to deliver immunization

should actually believe in it, " he said.

Health-care professionals are among the most likely people in a population to

encounter influenza in the run of a winter, coming face-to-face with sick people

on a daily basis. And because they work in a culture which in the past frowned

upon calling in sick, those who catch the flu may work while ill, effectively

passing it on to patients.

But despite those facts, health-care professionals have shown a remarkable

reluctance to embrace flu shots. Public health and infection control officials

have tried a variety of tacks, including offering the chance to win prizes for

staff who take flu shots.

Some in the field have even raised the notion of making flu shots mandatory for

health-care workers -- a suggestion that meets with instant push-back from

unions representing health-care professionals.

A bid by the Ontario government to require paramedics to get an annual flu shot

led to labour disruptions in 2002, with the government of the day eventually

backing down.

- also reminded the conference that immunizations are one of the most

cost effective of public health measures, saving countless lives and preventing

untold amounts of disease.

But their success makes them vulnerable, he warned, noting that some parents who

have never seen a case of smallpox or worried about the threat of polio now fear

vaccines more than they fear allowing their children to go unvaccinated.

Infectious diseases that are now rarely seen in Canada could be seen again,

- said, noting the long outbreak of mumps that swept the country as

an example.

" If the diseases that vaccines protect against, like polio, rubella and

pertussis are distant memories -- at least here -- then recent outbreaks of

mumps and imported measles should serve as reminders that we really are only a

few years away from major measles epidemics or other disease epidemics if we

don't maintain vigilance. "

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