By David Williams
18 September 2009
A leading authority on pandemics has said it is a matter of ‘duty and honour’ for doctors and nurses to lead by example and sign up for the swine flu vaccine when it is offered to them.
Virology professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary University of London, told Public Finance a successful inoculation campaign would require a take-up rate of 75% to 80% among health workers.
The vaccine, currently being tested, is expected to be available to priority groups from late October. These include essential NHS staff, pregnant women and people identified as being at increased risk, such as those with health conditions including asthma.
‘I think the acceptance rate might be a lot lower than we hope for,’ Oxford warned.
‘The danger is people will be too complacent. You don’t want to get people in a flap, but you also don’t want people to think it’s going to be like a cold and carry on. It’s a question of duty and honour for doctors and nurses that they will be expected to set an example.
‘There’s a huge responsibility sitting on their shoulders for them to stop worrying about the 101 things they seem to be worried about – “it might kill me, or make my arm itch”. Otherwise, they stand the risk of carrying the virus into hospitals or contracting it and carrying it home to their children.’
The Cabinet Office estimates that swine flu could kill 19,000 this winter in a worst-case scenario. Oxford said that, if the vaccination programme is successful, the death toll could be kept under 1,000.
But health care workers do not usually sign up for flu vaccines in large numbers. In the winter of 2008/09, only 16.5% of frontline staff in England took the Department of Health up on the offer of a flu jab. The year before, that figure was 13.4%.
Although annual public health campaigns have led to a take-up rate of 74.1% among pensioners, only 47.1% of under-65s in identified ‘at risk’ groups signed up for the seasonal flu vaccine last winter.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of the British Medical Association, agreed that the vaccine would protect patients as well as health care staff, and would relieve the strain on the NHS that rising absences due to flu could cause.
But he added the issue was fundamentally a matter of individual choice rather than public health.
‘We are opposed to the idea of compulsory vaccination and, in the end, a decision about whether to accept or decline a particular health intervention is a personal matter,’ he said.
See The right medicine
18 September 2009
A leading authority on pandemics has said it is a matter of ‘duty and honour’ for doctors and nurses to lead by example and sign up for the swine flu vaccine when it is offered to them.
Virology professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary University of London, told Public Finance a successful inoculation campaign would require a take-up rate of 75% to 80% among health workers.
The vaccine, currently being tested, is expected to be available to priority groups from late October. These include essential NHS staff, pregnant women and people identified as being at increased risk, such as those with health conditions including asthma.
‘I think the acceptance rate might be a lot lower than we hope for,’ Oxford warned.
‘The danger is people will be too complacent. You don’t want to get people in a flap, but you also don’t want people to think it’s going to be like a cold and carry on. It’s a question of duty and honour for doctors and nurses that they will be expected to set an example.
‘There’s a huge responsibility sitting on their shoulders for them to stop worrying about the 101 things they seem to be worried about – “it might kill me, or make my arm itch”. Otherwise, they stand the risk of carrying the virus into hospitals or contracting it and carrying it home to their children.’
The Cabinet Office estimates that swine flu could kill 19,000 this winter in a worst-case scenario. Oxford said that, if the vaccination programme is successful, the death toll could be kept under 1,000.
But health care workers do not usually sign up for flu vaccines in large numbers. In the winter of 2008/09, only 16.5% of frontline staff in England took the Department of Health up on the offer of a flu jab. The year before, that figure was 13.4%.
Although annual public health campaigns have led to a take-up rate of 74.1% among pensioners, only 47.1% of under-65s in identified ‘at risk’ groups signed up for the seasonal flu vaccine last winter.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of the British Medical Association, agreed that the vaccine would protect patients as well as health care staff, and would relieve the strain on the NHS that rising absences due to flu could cause.
But he added the issue was fundamentally a matter of individual choice rather than public health.
‘We are opposed to the idea of compulsory vaccination and, in the end, a decision about whether to accept or decline a particular health intervention is a personal matter,’ he said.
See The right medicine
