Benefits of flu jab 'beat risk'

BY PENNY WARDLE

Should the pregnant pause before taking up the government offer of a free seasonal influenza vaccine?

Marlborough Parents Centre deputy chairwoman Stacey Inwood had no reservations, saying she was confident the benefits of vaccination outweighed any risks.

Last Friday Mrs Inwood visited the Springlands Medical Centre for her free shot. As an asthmatic, she had always opted to be vaccinated against winter flu and the risk to pregnant women of serious complications from the pandemic "swine flu" strain was an added incentive, she said.

Her son Maz was fully immunised, she said.

Taking a different tack is Blenheim mother-of-four Corinne McBride.

A long-time campaigner against immunising children, Mrs McBride pointed to numerous internet articles reporting increased miscarriages following vaccination.

For most people, a healthy diet and lifestyle should help them fight winter flus, she said.

The cider vinegar and honey remedy used on her now high-school-aged and grown up children could also help.

Despite her kids missing out on most of their shots after their mother decided they could be harmful, they probably averaged no more than two weeks of sick days during their entire schooling, she said.

This year's flu vaccine covers two A flu strains including "swine flu" H1N1 along with a B strain that might circulate in the community.

Nelson Marlborough District Health Board communications adviser Katherine Rock said that for the first time, the vaccine would be free for pregnant women and the morbidly obese.

Also eligible for free flu shots were people with cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease including asthma, diabetes, chronic renal disease, cancer, and compromised immune systems.

Healthy children aged from six months to their fifth birthday and all people 65 years and older qualified too.

Ms Rock said intensive care units across Australia and New Zealand cited 9.1 per cent of those admitted with H1N1 were pregnant women and 28.6 per cent were obese.

In Australia and New Zealand four pregnant women died of H1N1.

Nelson Marlborough medical officer of health Jill Sherwood said "international evidence on the safety of the seasonal influenza vaccine showed no evidence of harm to the foetus from immunisation of pregnant women using inactivated virus vaccines."

Both the United States Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council recommended that pregnant women be vaccinated before the influenza season, regardless of the stage of pregnancy.

Dr Sherwood said the vaccine was normally given in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy but this year might be offered in the first trimester if there was a second wave of the H1N1 strain.

The Government's Medsafe website quotes a manufacturer's recommendation that the vaccine be administered to women beyond the first trimester of pregnancy to "avoid a coincidental association with spontaneous abortion".

The vaccine had not been tested on animals and risks of immunisation versus infection should be weighed up for individual women, says the manufacturer's fact sheet.

- The Marlborough Express