BALTIMORE, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Flu shots for all U.S. healthcare workers should be required to head off hospital outbreaks, a health expert said Wednesday.
Voluntary immunization plans just are not containing the bug, Trish Perl, associate professor of medicine and pathology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, argued in the Nov. 9 issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
Studies show only 40 percent of healthcare workers have received flu shots, she said.
"We have gone as far as possible with vaccination programs emphasizing education and health promotion," Perl said. "It's now time to go the extra step: requiring active declination or even making vaccination a mandatory part of the job."
She said a mandatory flu vaccination program is needed to prevent the accidental spread of the viral illness from healthcare worker to patient, or indirectly from other patients or hospital visitors via medical staff.
Previous Johns Hopkins studies have shown annual flu shots are 88 percent effective at reducing flu infection rates, and the vaccinations have cut in half the number of flu deaths among hospital patients, according to a university news release.
