Flu outlook more promising than the weather outside

Family physician and medical columnist Dr.Raj Bhardwaj spoke Tuesday on the Calgary Eyeopenerabout who, exactly, should make it a high priority to get a flu shot this year, along withhow nasty this year's strain of flu might get.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Click here to listen to the full conversation.

Q: What's new with flu shots?

A: Vaccines are getting better. For people 65 and older, there's a high dose vaccine that is shown to be a little more effective than the regular dose vaccine.

The problem is, that you have to give it to a lot of people to prevent oneextra flu andit's actually a lot more costly. If you take a senior andgive them all high dose flu vaccines, we would have to vaccinate about 200 extra seniors to prevent one case of influenza and about 4,000extra seniors to prevent one hospitalization.

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So becauseof that, the Albertagovernment isn't paying for the high dose vaccine but the vaccine we have does cover fourstrains, which is still pretty exciting.

Q: Who should get a flu shot?

A:Everybody should be getting vaccinated, but there are people in high-risk groups who we really think should definitely get it.

Pregnant andbreastfeeding women, for sure.

If a woman is breast feeding, she's five to 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and her baby is much more likely to be born premature, or even if not born premature, with a low birth weight, which has its own set of complications.

If you're pregnant or breastfeeding, get the shot

People with chronic diseases heart, lungs, things like that get the shot. Also, the new thing on the list this year is neurological disease: dementia, Parkinson, MS [multiple sclerosis], things like that.

People who live in any kind of long-term care, chronic care facility should definitely get one, just becausetheir risk is so much higher, plus their immune system is a little bit more weakened due to age.

People over 65 and also kids between sixmonths andfiveyears need to get it,becausetheir immune system might not be up to snuff and interestingly, also Indigenous people, who get hit harder than others, so they're on the list.

Also health-care professionals, and first responders.

And finally, people who say, "I can't afford to miss work. My company will collapse!Everyone else will have to do my work!"

So get your shot!

Q: How wasflu season in Australia, where flu season is the mirror opposite of Canada's,this year?

A:They actually had a pretty mild flu season,which is good.

One of the reasons was thatthe strain going around there was the H1N1 strain,which typically doesn't cause as bad a disease.

H3N2 is the strain that tends to mutate really quickly and causemore pandemic-type influenza things, more outbreaks. So hopefullythis yearours won't be so bad.

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With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.