Plea for aged to get free flu jab

Older Northlanders are being urged to get a free flu jab before the influenza season strikes.

Whangarei health promoters are concerned that over 6000 older residents will put themselves at risk of serious illness by not getting their free pre-winter flu vaccination. Each year about 40 per cent of the district's 15,300 older folk do not take up the offer, Age Concern executive Beryl Wilkinson said.

Mrs Wilkinson said she had heard of older people not going out during the flu season to avoid catching it.

"As an organisation concerned for the health and well-being of aged persons, we want to help them maintain an active life. We want them to be able to go out and about and not worry about catching the flu," she said.

"Aged persons have all sorts of opportunities if they can remain fit and well. We're over the days when older people were handed their knitting and told to just sit there or they might fall."

Age Concern was working closely with Manaia Primary Health Organisation (PHO) to encourage more to have the annual vaccination. Side effects were slight, if any, but flu-related illnesses could be serious and life-threatening, the PHO's clinical projects co-ordinator Jane Hill said.

"There are strong correlations between hospital intakes and people in that older age group who have not had a flu vaccination," Ms Hill said. "Over 65-year-olds are very vulnerable to catching this highly contagious disease."

Other vulnerable groups included pregnant women and people with long-term or serious medical conditions such as asthma and diabetes.

There were many "myths" associated with the flu and vaccination, Ms Hill said. Often people turned it down because they had not caught flu the year before and believed they had immunity, or did not realise how serious it could be.

"The flu makes you very sick, you can spend a week in bed feeling absolutely terrible. It's not just like a 'bad cold' and can lead to potentially fatal medical conditions, especially in at-risk groups."

Flu strains changed sometimes by the season and each new vaccination offered protection against current as well as older strains.

Among reasons people sometimes gave for not being vaccinated was that they had slight flu-like symptoms after a jab in the past. As the vaccination sometimes took up to two weeks to work there was a chance the person might already have been harbouring a cold or other virus, Ms Hill said. There was no "live" virus in the vaccination.

Mrs Wilkinson urged people to make appointments with their GP or health clinic for the free vaccination.