TORONTO - Canada's chief public health officer took aim at health-care professionals who refuse to get flu shots on Sunday, suggesting those who press the public to get vaccinated against diseases ought to do so themselves.
Dr. David Butler-Jones made the comments at the Canadian Immunization Conference, a gathering of public health practitioners and researchers staged annually by the Public Health Agency of Canada, in collaboration with public health groups.
"We even have difficulty getting more than 50 per cent of doctors and nurses to be immunized against the flu. Yet it's usually us who take it (influenza) into the nursing home or the hospital and then spread it from person to person, effectively killing some of those that we're caring for," Butler-Jones said.
"I think it should be obvious that those who we rely on to deliver immunization should actually believe in it," he said.
Health-care professionals are among the most likely people in a population to encounter influenza in the run of a winter, coming face-to-face with sick people on a daily basis. And because they work in a culture which in the past frowned upon calling in sick, those who catch the flu may work while ill, effectively passing it on to patients.
But despite those facts, health-care professionals have shown a remarkable reluctance to embrace flu shots. Public health and infection control officials have tried a variety of tacks, including offering the chance to win prizes for staff who take flu shots.
Some in the field have even raised the notion of making flu shots mandatory for health-care workers -- a suggestion that meets with instant push-back from unions representing health-care professionals.
A bid by the Ontario government to require paramedics to get an annual flu shot led to labour disruptions in 2002, with the government of the day eventually backing down.
Butler-Jones also reminded the conference that immunizations are one of the most cost effective of public health measures, saving countless lives and preventing untold amounts of disease.
But their success makes them vulnerable, he warned, noting that some parents who have never seen a case of smallpox or worried about the threat of polio now fear vaccines more than they fear allowing their children to go unvaccinated.
Infectious diseases that are now rarely seen in Canada could be seen again, Butler-Jones said, noting the long outbreak of mumps that swept the country as an example.
"If the diseases that vaccines protect against, like polio, rubella and pertussis are distant memories -- at least here -- then recent outbreaks of mumps and imported measles should serve as reminders that we really are only a few years away from major measles epidemics or other disease epidemics if we don't maintain vigilance."
