OUR strategy for flu vaccination is all wrong, a series of studies suggests. Instead of targeting elderly people, health agencies might prevent more deaths by vaccinating as many children as possible.
A study by Lone Simonsen of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease concludes that flu vaccination makes little difference when it comes to saving the lives of elderly people. Her team found no change in the winter death rate of elderly people between 1980 and 2001, even though the number given flu vaccination jumped from 15 to 65 per cent during this period, they report in this week鈥檚 Archives of Internal Medicine.
This may be because flu vaccine induces less immunity as people get older, or because the oldest and frailest people, who are most likely to die of flu, are least likely to be vaccinated.
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鈥淰accinating a fifth of children prevented nearly a fifth of infections in adults鈥�
Vaccinating children instead might make more sense, according to two other studies, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. The Baylor group found that vaccinating a fifth of children in a community also prevented nearly a fifth of respiratory infections in adults, while the Emory group鈥檚 mathematical model suggests that vaccinating 60 per cent of US schoolchildren might cut flu deaths among over-65s by 80 per cent.
