by Scott McIntyre on Wednesday, May 12, 2010
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Flu vaccine is given in mist form to a young girl at Greene County Medical Center in Jefferson.
The 2009-2010 flu season is coming to a close. Except for localized cases in the Southeast, Maine and Hawaii, current H1N1 flu information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates sporadic activity in most of the U.S. and no activity in Iowa and most of the Upper Midwest.
Evaluation is underway and official reports will be published in the coming months, but one conclusion is obvious: the flu season was expected to be much worse than it actually turned out to be.
Why?
While the official and scientific response to that question is in the works, an interesting bit of data was provided by a recent post on the Gallup Web site. Since September 2009, Gallup has randomly called 1,000 Americans a day and asked them, “Were you sick with the flu yesterday?”.
For seven of the eight months between September and April, the percentage of people who self-reported flu symptoms was lower in 2009-2010 than during the 2008-2009 flu season. The same was true for people who were asked if they had a cold the previous days.
So, surprisingly, on any given day fewer people were sick this flu season compared to that last one. The reasons are complicated and, as noted, being figured out.
But at least partial credit for this decline goes to efforts to inform and educate the public about the flu, how to prevent its spread and, of course, constantly pushing people to get vaccinated, Gallup concluded. People washed their hands, sneezed into their elbows, stayed home when they were sick and went out of their way to get their shots. And they reminded their families and friends to do the same.
A sheriff's deputy gets his flu shot at Mahaska Health Partnership in Oskaloosa.
Hospitals played an important role in all of this. Hospitals were not only a source of vaccine, but also a source of expert information that was disseminated to the community through a large corps of knowledgeable, trusted health care professionals.
In most communities, no other entity – public or private – could have fulfilled the mission that hospitals did during the 2009-2010 flu season.
Hospitals also increased their credibility in this potential crisis by setting the example – by diligently enforcing hygiene policies and pressing employees to get vaccinated. This is why, nationwide, hospital employees had higher vaccination rates than all other health care workers – nearly 75 percent, versus about 50 percent for all other workers. Hospitals that required vaccination had a 97 percent rate.
Final results are still being tabulated, but expect Iowa hospitals to fall somewhere between 80 and 90 percent for their employee vaccination rates. Not a bad result, but you can count on hospital leaders to be pushing their staffs to do better.
Genesis Health System, Davenport, four years ago started Flu-Free Quad Cities, an initiative that provides free seasonal flu immunizations to thousands of elementary age children in the region. Last fall, 10,000 children received the free vaccinations at their schools. The effort requires a partnership between school districts, regional health departments, Genesis VNA and Hospice, and many donors. Last year about $250,000 was raised to pay for the vaccine. Enough funding remains to serve at least 10,000 children again this fall, although we will begin this fall to ask if parents would be willing to pay the $12 cost of the vaccine. They will not be required to pay. The administration of the vaccine and other costs are provided by Genesis. The design is that if you vaccinate young children, you are also protecting others around them, including parents, siblings and grandparents. Young children are efficient carriers of the flu virus but vaccination rates are typically very low. In the schools we go into, our coverage averages 40 percent. The project won a Communitas Award for public outreach in 2009.