Public flu vaccination program a success without doctors, Haggie insists

The health minister says this flu season's vaccination program was a success because more people got flu shotsthis year compared with last year, even though the province stopped paying doctors to give them.

John Haggiesays 20 per cent of people in Newfoundland and Labrador were vaccinated during the 2016-17 flu season. Already this year, during the '17-18 season,more than 22 per cent of people in the province had been vaccinated by the end of March.

"It went very well compared with previous years," he said. "We've administered more than116,000 doses as of the end of March.Last year 105,000 doses were administered."

That number included people who received flu shots from their physicians as part of a regular office visit but it doesn't includepeople who paid for a flu shot at a pharmacy.

In 2017, the province announced it would stop paying doctors a fee each time they give a patient a flu shot. Instead, health officialsset up a mass public vaccination programwith shots administered by nurses.

• Cutting funding for doctor-delivered flu shots bad decision, says medical association

At the time, doctors said itwas a bad idea, arguing many of their patients rely on them to do flu shot clinics. Without the clinics, warned doctors,many people wouldn't get shots, more people would get sick, and some might even die.

Confirmed flu cases up

Health officials says there have beenmore flu cases and more flu-related deaths in 2017-18 compared with the previous year.

• 33 flu-related deaths in N.L. as number of cases jumps

Dr. Claudia Sarbu, chief medical officer of health for Newfoundland and Labrador, said there were 50 per centmore confirmed cases of the flu this seasoncompared with last year,and the number of flu-related deaths this year more than doubled: 33 this season versus 14 last year.

The flu shot was a mismatch.- Claudia Sarbu

But Sarbu says those numbers aren't up becausepeople didn't get the flu shot. She says those increases happened becausethe strain of flu that spread in the province this yearwas particularly powerful and the shot that people received didn't work.

"This year the flu shot was a mismatch. So studies have shown that the current vaccine effectiveness against the H3N2strainwas only 17 per cent," said Sarbu.

"When we see this strain we should expect that the cases are more severe, we have more hospitalizations, and therefore we will see more deaths."

Not about costs

Haggie said the government hasn't done a cost analysis of the public vaccination program yet but addedthe physicians's flu shot fee wasn't eliminatedto save money.

Instead, he said, the goal was to change doctors' scope of practice, to encourage them to do things that only they are trained to do and have other health providers, such asnurses, take some tasks off their plates, such as administeringflushots.

Haggie says changing how flu shots are administered is just one of many similar changes that are coming.

"We'll be introducing midwifery in central Newfoundland over the course of the fall. We have nurse-practicioners who can help out with routinemanagementof primary care taking some of the workload off physicians's shoulders."

Hoping to hike vaccination rate

Despite this year's increase, fewer than25 per centof people in Newfoundland and Labradors receive flu shots annually.

Haggie says that's muchtoo low and he'd like to see the influenza vaccinationincreased to more than above 70 per cent of the population.

He says the problem isn't the availability of flu shots but that people don't want to get them.