Get a flu jab – or get another job
It started with a cough. Katie van de Pas might have just put up with it, but she was 34 weeks pregnant so she popped into a medical centre. ‘‘A few days later I started coughing up blood.’’
The ‘‘flu’’ most people cite is not a killer; what had hold of Katie was. A vaccine could have prevented it.
The 29-year-old was taken to Waikato Hospital in an ambulance, in a critical condition. Her daughter Dinah was born the next day by emergency caesarean – but Katie doesn’t remember that. She spent the next two weeks in a coma, with swine flu. ‘‘I feel like I was robbed of my baby’s birth.’’
Hers was the story drawn upon by former Waikato District Health Board chief executive Nigel Murray, when he announced that clinical staff should get the flu jab, or be required to wear face masks.
That proved contentious, with nurses suspended after refusing.
Now Dr Murray has resigned. An audit found he travelled at taxpayers’ expense, and enjoyed overseas jaunts when on sick leave. This week, acting DHB boss Derek Wright asked an infection control committee to review whether face masks are an effective solution.
They’re not. That is what the committee will inevitably report. The medical literature is almost unanimous that any mask short of a hazmat suit is largely ineffectual.
But to simply get rid of the face mask policy would be shortsighted, on its own. Murray did many things wrong, but he was right about the dangers of the flu virus to weakened patients.
And he was right about the importance of persuading health staff to be vaccinated: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found the jab reduces the risk of flu illness by 40 to 60 per cent. So New Zealand’s solution should be far more hardline: DHBs should first offer incentives for staff to get vaccinated, as Britain’s National Health Service does: chocolates, lollipops, stickers reading ‘‘I’m a Flu Fighter’’.
For those health professionals who refuse to respond to the carrot, bring out the stick. DHBs should make immunisation a contractual job requirement, unless the employee has a specific health or religious reason why they can’t have the vaccine.
You want a public salary? You take reasonable steps to minimise the risk you pose to your vulnerable patients. That’s what many US hospitals require.
Before the NZ Nurses Organisation and others howl about the personal violation, remember this: flu kills more than 400 people a year in New Zealand. The young, the old, those with asthma and cardiopulmonary conditions, and the pregnant.
Katie van de Pas was very nearly one of those statistics. ‘‘Health workers are in contact with vulnerable people all the time, like mothers and newborns,’’ she says. ‘‘They have to be responsible.’’