Students wait for vaccine

High school kids in the central region may have been back at school this morning ready to receive the H1N1 vaccine, but it looks as though they will have to wait in order for that to happen.

Exploits Valley High students went home with letters, consent forms and fact sheets in hand on Friday. Nova Central School District sent out the package to schools in an effort to prepare students to receive the H1N1 vaccine in school clinics.

Nova Central School Board Director Cindy Fleet said the board would be meeting all weekend with health officials in an effort to plan out school-wide inoculations in the district. "It is very important that parents ensure that parents have the information and consent form so they can make an informed decision, said Ms. Fleet. "All the info must be provided on the government consent form and we will have schools following up when we do not have submissions returned. Then when health is ready they will inform us when this will begin."

Dr. Bev White, Central Health's director for population and public health, said it may be in excess of two weeks before that happens.

"Our shipment coming on Wednesday won't be enough for us to go to our school population with...I would expect hopefully that our supply will be increased, she said. "That's an estimate and it is changing daily."

Dr. White said the central region was expected to receive 8,000 doses on Wednesday to utilize the following week, but they were informed by the province's Health Department that that number would be significantly less.

"We will get more," she said. "We just won't get it as quickly as we had anticipated, but there's no indication that we won't be getting enough vaccine to immunize the entire population. There's just going to be a small delay in receipt of it."

Eileen Bouzane, a worker in housekeeping at the Carmelite seniors home, said she and other mothers think that is not soon enough.

"That's two weeks from now," she said "The ones that should have been targeted first was school age children. They go to school, they cough and sneeze on one another, they are sharing lunch and drinking off one another. I would not have gotten a needle if I knew it could have been given to a child. They are not taking this seriously."

Dr. Stefan Mulder is a general practitioner who sees patients at the walk-in clinic in Grand Falls - Windsor. He has been vocal about his criticism of the way Central Health is handling the H1N1 vaccination program.

"The majority people are going to survive but any death that's caused by something that could be prevented is an unnecessary death even one. Nobody wants to see their own child get that sick...people don't like to hear me say this but I still think parents should keep their kids home from school until they are vaccinated. I definitely recommend that."

He said he thinks that the revised scheduling adding clinics since Thursday is a move in the right direction and absolutely necessary. "This is encouraging and positive but especially if there is a shortage of vaccine more effort should be made to protect the vulnerable of our population."

Dr. Mulder said he also thinks that pregnant women should consider staying home from work. "The highest death rate at the moment is people of an average age of 32 and that is about 70 percent females. The (World Health Organization) feel(s) this is due to the high vulnerability of pregnant women. So they should be protected at all cost...if there are any pregnant teachers or pregnant women exposed to the public they should be excused from work and they should go where they are safe from the public until they are vaccinated."

When the vaccine is rolled out into the schools setting, Ms. Fleet said kids will likely be bused to clinics set up in various but not all schools in the region. "In a community where two or more schools are located in proximity to one another this is not just a matter of a nurse going in and giving people needles, she said. "There is a whole process here. There is a setup, there are com puter requirements, there is a pre-section, when people come in to the triage, they have to register, the data has to be entered, then they receive the shot and in the end of it there's recovery so it is not efficient to start moving the whole clinic and all the vaccine and the coolers and the people and the computers from one building to another if they can stay in one building."

She said so far attendance rates have been fairly high in the central region staying around the 75-100 per cent. The exception is Gander Collegiate where the percentage has fallen to below 50 per cent as a result of flu related illness and parents keeping their children home out of concern.

Health officials are still encouraging parents to keep children in school. "The Public Healthy Agency of Canada doesn't recommend school closures as a public health measure and we are going by that national advice," said Dr. White.

The Nova Central School Board agrees with that decision. "Schools are open and they will remain open as long as we can operate, said Ms. Fleet. "If anyone is ill, they are advised to stay at home and parents of children who have preexisting health conditions who would be at high risk are asked to seek the advice of their doctor. "

And for those who are critical of Central Health's decision not to include children among those first to be immunized, Dr. White said they stand by their plan. "The Public Health Agency of Canada produced categories of risk that would benefit most from the vaccine and that is the category we started out immunizing first," she said. "Healthy school age children were in the second category. Workers were among the first so we couldn't justify going to the second category without vaccinating the people in the first category."