Quick jab saves lives

This article was published in the Canberra Times in April 2010

As the weather gets colder, so begins the season of exaggerated claims by people who say they've got the flu. A bit of runny nose? A tickle in the throat? Oh it must be flu! Yes, that disease that killed over 20 million people in 1918.

Just to get things straight, cold and flu are not interchangeable words. The common cold gives you congestion, a runny nose, sore throat and cough. Influenza generally confines you to bed – not because you fancy a lie in with a good book, but because you physically can't get up because of the high fever, body aches, shivering and sweating.

If you surveyed your workmates, you could be forgiven for thinking that the average person gets a flu about ten times a year. However in reality, flu is estimated to infect between five and 20% of the population annually.

But what difference does it make when, to quote The Smiths, I'm feeling very sick and ill today? Isn't this all just an issue of nomenclature?

Well, no. When we misdiagnose ourselves with flu, we down-play the severity of the virus and risk becoming complacent about a disease that, according to the Influenza Specialist Group (ISG), kills about 3500 Australians each year. To put this in perspective, this is a figure greater than the national road toll, or the number of annual deaths from prostate cancer or from breast cancer. On top of this, the flu is responsible for about 18,000 hospitalisations each year. And before you going thinking that these are just old people already knocking on death's door, over 80% of these admissions were of people under 65 years old.

The provisional results of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Adult Vaccination Survey showed that last year, during a time of unprecedented talk about flu, just 19% of people aged over 18 years bothered to get the free H1N1 vaccine. Why is it that so few people get immunised against what can be life-threatening disease?

Apart from general complacency, part of the problem seems to stem from a number of misunderstandings regarding the virus and the vaccine. An ISG study in 2008 found that one-third of respondents wrongly believed that the influenza vaccine actually gives you the flu. Almost two-thirds of respondents did not believe that the vaccine was particularly effective, and a similar number thought that being fit and healthy would offer some protection against flu.

It seems that sadly, in the battle between science and hearsay, we often place more weight in a colleague's claim to have developed a cough not 30 minutes after receiving the flu vaccine than we do in years of research, testing and reporting. It is my experience that whenever the words 'illness' and 'vaccine' are mentioned in the same sentence, people immediately start spouting conspiracy theories about the evil plans of pharmaceutical companies for world domination. Suddenly we forget about the millions of people who used to die from smallpox every year, or the hundreds of thousands of children who were crippled with polio. Although still far from being fully utilised in developing countries, immunisation prevents millions of deaths every year. Without question, it is one of the most successful public health interventions ever.

In the case of the influenza vaccine, I think part of the problem comes down to one of marketing. We have sold a message that immunisation is about protecting yourself, and thus the counter-argument can be mounted that if you don't have the time or the inclination for a jab, then that is your business, your risk.

Instead we need to reinvent the way that we look at vaccination of influenza and other diseases and celebrate it as an act of community service, similar perhaps to the way that we view blood donation. Getting vaccinated should be lauded as an altruistic deed that limits the spread of disease and protects vulnerable members of our community such as babies, pregnant women, those suffering from chronic illness and Indigenous Australians. Not only that, it is a simple measure that will free up hospital beds, empty doctor's waiting rooms and have a positive effect on the economy.

So this year, instead whingeing that your sore throat is a bout of dreaded flu, why not do something proactive? Quit crying wolf and take up the offer of vaccination. I guarantee that your second or two of discomfort will be much appreciated by me, and by others considered vulnerable or at-risk.