If it’s fall, it’s flu season
Vaccinations the best defence against misery of influenza
As the days get shorter and the temperatures drop in Niagara, you can almost predict it like clockwork: at hospital emergency rooms people will start showing up hacking, wheezing, nursing a fever and suffering aching muscles.
You can also predict that a good number of the younger people coming to emergency rooms with influenza end up at the pediatric ward at the Niagara Health hospital in St. Catharines, sometimes with very serious symptoms and complications, such as pneumonia, that in rare cases can even be fatal for young people.
Across Ontario, upwards of 1,365 people — many seniors with coexisting, chronic health conditions — can die each year from influenza. Last winter, a 12-yearold girl and a seven-year-old boy, both in Waterloo region, died from influenza.
That’s a whole lot of suffering, misery and loss of life that medical experts in Niagara say is largely preventable if people simply listened to their advice and took a few moments to get vaccinated against the flu.
“That’s a big reason why we put a lot of emphasis on influenza and getting a vaccine, because for some people it is very, very serious,” said Dr. M. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health.
The Ontario government offers the vaccine for free and recently made it much more convenient to get vaccinated by allowing pharmacists to now administer it.
“It’s free, it doesn’t take very long to get your vaccine, so why wouldn’t you?” asks Hirji. “Why take the risk of getting ill and possibly hospitalized or passing off the illness to your elderly parents or your children or your co-workers or other loved ones?”
Yet as easy as it is to get vaccinated in Niagara — vaccines are distributed to 109 pharmacies and 153 health-care providers including doctors and nursepractitioners, and the region holds its own vaccination clinics — many people still shun it.
Regional statistics show a large percentage of people aren’t opting to get the protection, for reasons that can range from myths that the vaccine is dangerous, that it will make their own immune system lazy, or that it’s not effective.
Hirji conceded vaccine science is not perfect: the influenza virus is constantly mutating and there can be multiple strains, vaccines must be crafted each year with best guesses on which makeup will most effectively target the dominant strain that year.
The rate of preventing infection can range from a low of 40 per cent some years to as high as 80 per cent on the best years, said Hirji. Among those who get vaccinated but still get infected, the symptoms are usually milder because the immune system has been primed, he said.
“A minimum 40 per cent are getting total protection, then a whole bunch more are getting some protection,” said Hirji.
Health officials are stressing the importance of getting kids vaccinated this flu season. That’s welcome news to Dr. Omer Shaikh, a Niagara Health pediatrician who also has a private practice in St. Catharines. At any given time on the pediatric ward at the St. Catharines hospital, Shaikh can have three or four kids during flu season hospitalized for up to a week with influenza and sometimes even battling complications such as pneumonia, dehydration and trouble breathing.
He said it’s crucial that people over age 65 and kids aged six months and older get vaccinated, as well as people coming into frequent contact with those atrisk populations such as healthcare providers, teachers, daycare staff and bus drivers.
“(But) everyone should get it,” he said. Influenza “is certainly avoidable.”
Kids getting their influenza vaccine for the first time need to get two doses that initial year, at least a month apart for full effectiveness, said Shaikh. The good thing for kids afraid of needles and parents squeamish about seeing their little ones crying at the sight of a syringe is that Ontario now funds a nasal spray version of the vaccine.
Shaikh also said people should take precautions, such as cleaning hard surfaces and washing their hands often, to prevent the spread of influenza because the virus is a very hardy one.
“Influenza is a tough one because it spreads so easily,” he said. Hirji said there’s a side benefit to stressing the need for child vaccinations.
“If people are going to get their children vaccinated there’s a good chance that they’re going to get themselves vaccinated at the same time,” he said.
The belief that not getting a vaccine strengthens the body’s immune system is faulty because the entire idea of a vaccine is that
‘‘ It’s really giving your immune system a workout, giving it practice, training it to fight the influenza virus.” DR. M. MUSTAFA HIRJI Acting medical officer of health
it triggers an immune response, said Hirji.
“It’s really giving your immune system a workout, giving it practice, training it to fight the influenza virus,” he said.
Misconceptions are also out there that getting the vaccine can actually infect you with the virus. Hirji said the injectable version only contains some proteins from the virus grown in a lab, so it’s impossible to infect you. While the nasal spray version does contain a live but weakened form of influenza, it can only grow in the nostrils and has been engineered to be killed off when it’s exposed to the body’s heat, he said.
Hirji said health officials take public worry over potential sideeffects very seriously, but he lets the numbers do the talking on that front.
In Ontario in 2016, the year with the most recent available data, 3.6 million doses were given out, he said. Of those, 120 people suffered side-effects, and of those, 116 were mild issues such as redness or pain where they were injected, said Hirji.
“The side-effects are extremely rare,” he said. “We’re looking at 0.003 per cent of people (who) had a side-effect.”
If people are on the fence about getting vaccinated, Hirji urged them to just compare 1,365 deaths versus 120 cases with side-effects.
“You look at those two numbers: which side do you want to be on?”
The region hosts flu vaccination clinics at regional headquarters Mondays from 9 to 11:20 a.m. and Tuesdays from 4:10 to 6:50 p.m., plus satellite clinics Thursdays from 1 to 3:35 p.m. Next Thursday’s clinics are at 200 Division St. in Welland and 1264 Garrison Rd., Unit 12, in Fort Erie.
It’s recommended that people book appointments by calling public health at 905-688-8248 or 1-888-505-6074, ext. 7425.