Management of flu can curb pneumonia

Influenza vaccines and antiviral drugs greatly reduce the incidence of and mortality associated with community-acquired pneumonia, but they are grossly underutilized, according to a professor of medicine at the University of British Colombia, Vancouver.

We are not optimizing the management of influenza by far, in my opinion largely because of costs and political unwillingness to put out money. We are the ones that influence policy and set the track, and we need to do a better job at campaigning for improved resources to reduce the morbidity and mortality due to influenza because it’s quite clear now that we’re just not doing enough.

Until now, influenza prevention has focused on so-called high-risk groups, but there is no reason why the net shouldn’t be widened to include everyone. During the 2003-2004 influenza-associated deaths among children in the United States were those with no high-risk conditions.

These were your normal children or grandchildren, adding that 70 percent of the deaths resulted from respiratory infection and 47 percent of these were from confirmed CAP. Pneumonia is a scary thing for the public, but influenza is not. Influenza is something that the public can trivialize until it’s a member of their family that dies from pneumonia. So if we show we can actually prevent pneumonia with the optimization of influenza vaccine and antivirals, we can probably get better public acceptance.

We suggested putting more pressure on target groups such as health care workers. We should make vaccination a condition of employment for health care workers, and if they don’t want it, they can’t work in a health care institution. And essential service workers designated as first priority for antiviral prophylaxis in the event of pandemic should be denied the drugs if they were not vaccinated.