Dr. Poland says that an important responsibility rests with physicians and health-care systems in achieving high influenza vaccine-coverage rates in the elderly.
"Sadly," he says, "the data at hand lead to the undeniable conclusion that health-care providers as a whole may actually be a barrier to preventing death and hospitalization due to complications of influenza. Physicians and health-care systems have been aware of the benefits of the influenza vaccine, as the advantages have been repeatedly demonstrated in high-quality clinical and population-based studies for at least two decades. Despite long-standing national recommendations that make influenza immunization the standard of care, progress in improving influenza coverage rates has been unacceptably slow at best, taking decades to achieve coverage rates of 60 percent."
Dr. Poland compares the health-care community's slowness to promote the influenza vaccine among the elderly to the rapidity with which he believes it would take action against the HIV virus.
"If an equally safe and effective vaccine to prevent HIV infection were available next month," Dr. Poland asks, "would it take us decades to offer it to 60 percent of the at-risk population?"
Dr. Poland offers several potential strategies to achieve universal influenza vaccination of the elderly:
Dr. Poland's editorial sounds a serious warning to the medical community about the state of influenza vaccination of the elderly and possible consequences of failure to improve vaccination rates.
"We must devise and learn how to achieve high influenza immunization rates for the eventuality of the next influenza pandemic and for the possibility of bioengineered influenza used as a bioweapon of mass destruction," Dr. Poland says. "Now is the time to get it right and begin the process of saving thousands of lives."
Note: The corresponding author of the article Dr. Poland editorializes, "Influence of High-Risk Medical Conditions on the Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccination Among Elderly Members of Three Large Managed-Care Organizations," is Kristin Nichol, M.D., VA Medical Center, Minneapolis, Minn. To contact Dr. Nichol, please call Linda Duffy at 612-725-2102.
Video Feed: A video feed, including sound bites from the physician and vaccination b-roll, will be fed via satellite at 2 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002
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Program 14:05-14:30
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Clinical Infectious Diseases