Dr Christian Jessen: Get your jabs for the flu season

Dr Christian Jessen10 April 2012

Flu season is upon us and experts are predicting one of the worst outbreaks of recent years, but the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has decided this year not to run the usual TV and media advertising campaigns encouraging people to get their flu jabs. Instead he has made it clear that it is up to GPs to contact their high-risk patients about getting vaccinated.

They were aimed at patients who are considered at high risk of flu, including pregnant women, the over-65s, the obese, and anyone with a long-term illness such as asthma, heart disease or diabetes. Last year the usual flu awareness campaign was canned but was then rapidly resurrected in a panic when flu cases increased alarmingly towards the end of the year.

Asking GPs to do the job instead is definitely short-sighted when traditionally the profession has a pretty poor record of getting public health messages across. Given that last year thousands of GP surgeries ran out of jabs, I'm not sure our GPs are going to be terribly enthusiastic about taking on yet another role. Perhaps courting some of the main morning television programmes and news stations to run regular reminders would be a far cheaper and more effective way of reaching the public?

Suspicions about vaccines abound along with the yearly "flu myths" that do the rounds, so let's quash some of them early in the season. First, the flu jab cannot give you flu. While it may cause transient mild flu-like symptoms in some people, it contains no live virus and so cannot infect you. If you do develop a full-blown cold after getting the jab, then it is sheer coincidence.

Second, despite the anti-vaccine lobby's efforts to persuade you otherwise, the jab does work, giving 70 to 80 per cent protection against infection. In older patients with less efficient immune systems it still reduces the incidence of bronchopneumonia, hospital admissions and mortality. I would also recommend that all children under five get the jab because of the significant numbers of child deaths from flu last year.

Follow me on Twitter: @DoctorChristian

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