Quick on the uptake
This is the time of year when half the population is resolving to lose weight, stop smoking and take more exercise to stave off a range of potentially life-threatening conditions. The other half is either flat on its back in bed with flu or sniffling, coughing and sneezing its way to work in sub zero temperatures.
This is the time of year when half the population is resolving to lose weight, stop smoking and take more exercise to stave off a range of potentially life-threatening conditions. The other half is either flat on its back in bed with flu or sniffling, coughing and sneezing its way to work in sub zero temperatures.
In the US, New Jersey is the first state to make flu vaccinations compulsory for children aged from six months to five years who are attending licensed daycare and preschool programmes. The aim is to reduce the spread of the virus in the population at large as well as among this vulnerable sector of society – each year in the US some 20,000 children are hospitalised because of flu-related complications and last year 86 of them died.
Predictably, there have been protests by a number of parents who still, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe that vaccines can cause autism. It remains to be seen whether personal conviction can triumph over public health.
In the UK, in contrast, there seems to be little parental resistance to the HPV vaccination campaign, with more than 70% of 12-13 year old girls having already received their initial jab. Such is the success of the campaign that the government is bringing forward the vaccinations of girls aged 13-17.
Things are going far less smoothly in India, however, where Merck & Co’s Gardasil was launched in October 2008 – accompanied, apparently, by an advertising blitz that has, according to a report in The Times of India, ‘left Indian households confused and health workers worried’.
Concerns seem to centre on the ethics of direct-to-patient advertising, the use of fear to drive sales, the lack of information about side-effects reported in the US and the ethics of vaccinating girls as young as ten.
Protecting the young and vulnerable is a basic human instinct, whether by encouraging them to exercise more and improve their diet, or by vaccinating them against a variety of diseases ranging from the merely unpleasant to the disabling or even life-threatening.
As one of those struck down by flu over the holiday, the virulence of the virus has convinced me that as soon as I am eligible for an annual flu jab I will be joining the queue at the doctor’s surgery. And if Medimmune’s nasal spray live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), submitted for filing in the EU recently, is approved, I may not even have to suffer an injection.