N.B. expands flu shot program

[B]Public health office will offer free seasonal flu vaccine to children under 18[/B]


New Brunswick's Department of Health says it's expanding its seasonal flu vaccination program to cover all children under 18 after the success of last fall's H1N1 campaign.

The public health office used to offer free seasonal flu vaccinations for all children under two.

Dr. Paul Van Buynder, the deputy chief medical officer of health, said the vaccination program will be expanded this fall, which will bring the cost of the annual campaign to more than $1 million, a roughly 70 per cent increase.

The department is trying to capitalize on the success of its H1N1 campaign last year, which saw close to 65 per cent of New Brunswick residents getting the swine flu shot.

"We did a lot of research by ringing parents at the end of the vaccination campaign," Van Buynder said.

"About a quarter of the parents who'd never had their children previously vaccinated have decided that they want to do that this year. We hope to build on it and get very good rates of coverage."

New Brunswick's vaccination rate for H1N1 was higher than that in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, which had less than a third of their populations vaccinated.

The health department ordered 170,000 doses of seasonal flu vaccine in 2008, and that spiked to 225,000 in 2009 during the H1N1 campaign. This year, Van Buynder said he estimates that the provincial government will purchase more than 300,000 doses of seasonal flu vaccine.

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The N.B. Department of Health is expanding the seasonal flu vaccine program partly because of the effective campaign to fight the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.

[B]Protecting the community[/B]


The public health official said it's important for an entire community that children are vaccinated against the flu.

"If we can protect the children, … they don't infect their grandparents and they don't infect the other children, and we get very little flu in the community as a whole," Van Buynder said.

"It also saves the community because the parents don't stay home to look after their children; the children are in schools and so on."

Van Buynder said the H1N1 vaccine will be included in this year's seasonal flu shot, which will be available starting in October.

He said health officials are still trying to determine how much latent protection children might still have left over from the H1N1 shot they got last year.

Normally, children are given two doses of the vaccine. But Van Buynder said the department might reduce the dosage for children to take the latent effects of last year's dose into account.

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Dr. Paul Van Buynder, the deputy chief medical officer of health, said the province expects to purchase more than 300,000 doses of seasonal flu vaccine in 2010.