GPs failing to vaccinate elderly against flu

AS Ireland prepares for a swine flu pandemic the State’s disease monitoring watchdog says GPs are failing to ensure that their older patients are vaccinated against the seasonal flu.

Only three out of five people over the age of 65 are vaccinated against the flu virus – a disease responsible for around 400 deaths in Ireland every year.

Director of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, Dr Darina O’Flanagan, said GPs needed to make a greater effort at persuading their older patients to get vaccinated.

She also urged doctors to treat people over 65 presenting with flu symptoms with anti-viral drugs, even if they had already received the vaccination.

Disease complications included a worsening of pre-existing chronic medical conditions, such as chronic bronchitis or chronic heart failure.

The most frequent complication, however, is pneumonia.

Dr O’Flanagan, who was speaking at the annual scientific meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of Ireland in Dublin, said the vaccine offered the best protection against the virus.

She said there was evidence that the vaccine decreased respiratory illnesses by 56%; pneumonia by 53% and hospitalisation by 68%.

Dr O’Flanagan said doctors also needed to persuade the public to take the new H1N1virus seriously – that it was not just a minor illness.

“It has the same mortality as seasonal influenza. It will affect the under-50s, and that is where the morbidity will be. So it is young people in the prime of their lives.”

Dr O’Flanagan also pointed out that half of the people who contracted swine flu in the United States were perfectly healthy when they contracted the disease.

Another speaker, Prof Dilip Nathwani, a consultant physician in infectious diseases at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School in Dundee, stressed the importance of the medical profession working with hospital managers and patient support groups in reducing hospital acquired infections.

Prof Nathwani said all consultants should be responsible for reviewing antibiotic prescriptions on their ward rounds, stopping unnecessary prescriptions and changing those that are non-compliant with agreed guidelines.

President of the Infectious Diseases Society of Ireland, Dr Colm Bergin, said consultants, management and the public, had to work together to control and prevent hospital-acquired infections.