Three Oklahoma City hospitals are giving their employees an ultimatum!
Ed Doney of KFOR news in Oklahoma City, reported on Sept. 18, 2009, that “Three metro hospitals are giving their employees an ultimatum in an effort to protect their patients and staff from seasonal and H1N1 flu. It's a policy coming from the Hospital Corporation of America, which is affiliated with OU Medical Center, Edmond Medical Center and Oklahoma Surgicare.” “It requires a vaccination shot for seasonal influenza, or a not-so-subtle change to their outfit.” "We have a lot of high-risk patients here at OU Medical Center," says Infection Control Manager Margaret Tannehill, "and we want to protect them." Tannehill says “starting October 1, employees who haven't received a seasonal flu shot will be required to wear a surgical mask for their entire shift.”
This is not an isolated instance. In New York “tens of thousands of health care workers who typically avoid flu shots are under more pressure than ever to get vaccinated as hospitals and clinics prepare for a spike in swine flu cases this fall and winter.” As reported on Sept. 8, 2009 by News9.com. Also “A state health official says she expects Oklahoma to be 1 of the first states to get the brunt of the swine flu this year. State epidemiologist Dr. Kristy Bradley says the number of people with flu-like illnesses increased at least 25% in 5 of the state's eight regions in the week ending Aug. 29.”
The World Health Organization has already declared H1N1 a Pandemic and gives weekly updates. According to the WHO, as of Sept. 13, 2009, there are 296,471 cases world wide and 3,486 deaths. And the current level of the outbreak is 6, which by their scale is the peak of the outbreak.
Sept. 15, 2009 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has approved four vaccines against the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. The vaccines will be distributed nationally after the initial lots become available, which is expected within the next four weeks. “Today's approval is good news for our nation's response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus,” said Commissioner of Food and Drugs Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. “This vaccine will help protect individuals from serious illness and death from influenza.”
The L.A. Times reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that when the H1N1 flu vaccine is ready, the first people to get it should be children and young adults between age 6 months and 24 years. That strategy is expected to result in 59 million swine flu cases, 139,000 deaths and cost $67 billion. If vaccine doses were first distributed to children between age 5 and 19 and to adults age 30 to 39, there would be 15 million fewer infections and 31,000 fewer deaths, write mathematician Jan Medlock and epidemiologist Alison Galvani in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Their strategy would also save $14 billion, they calculate.
And now the story of President Obama’s H1N1 bill to declare martial law has surfaced to create more anxiety among the masses.
If all of this news is to calm nerves and to appease the general public, it does not seem to be working. In the middle of a health care reform debate going on across the country, apathy towards a Influenza pandemic would be the last thing you would expect. But Partisan conflict at town hall meetings are as close to a political debate on the subject that we can expect.
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