BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[flu shot]](/editions/1998/09/24/shot_180x127.jpg)
Linnett Leisner of ProActive Health Services give a flu shot to Sally Phelps.
(Michael Snyder photo)
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For the last four years, Sally Phelps hasn't had to think twice about getting a flu shot.
Like a growing number of people, she signs up at work for her annual immunization against the coming winter's influenza.
Ms. Phelps, human resources coordinator at William Powell Valve Co. in Camp Washington, is convinced the flu shot has kept her healthy in winters past.
"Since I've started getting flu shots, I really haven't been sick," she says. "I think it works, and I've gotten one every year that we've offered them here."
Flu shots are becoming available nearly everywhere you go -- at work, at the grocery or drug store, at school, at the community center or senior center.
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FLU FACTS
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Who should get a shot
Where to get a shot
The Vaccine
The 1998-99 vaccine protects against three strains predicted to dominate this season: A - Beijing, B - Sydney and B - Harbin.
Flu shots offer about 70 percent protection from the flu. Immunity is considered to be full one to two weeks after receiving the shot.
Side effects of vaccine
About 5 percent to 10 percent of people have mild side effects (headache, low-grade fever) from a flu shot
Flu symptoms
Fever of 102-104 degrees Fahrenheit, chills, headache, cough, sore throat, muscle aches.
Symptoms usually hit quickly, and sickness can last up to three weeks.
Treatment
Several medicines, if given within the first 24-48 hours of symptoms, can lessen the severity of flu. Talk with your doctor.
Drink plenty of liquids, get plenty of rest, treat symptoms as they arise. Stay away from others if you're contagious. Flu spreads by viruses in tiny nose droplets or lung fluids that are sneezed, coughed or breathed into the air.
Fallout
About 25 million to 50 million Americans each year get the flu, and on average, about 20,000 people die from it or its complications.
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Once a private medical service between doctors and patients, getting a flu shot has become a community affair, with lots of people involved.
For the first time this year, a Tristate health coalition is sponsoring a 24-hour communitywide flu-shot hot line -- 931-7468 -- and billboard ads to encourage shots for people most likely to get the flu.
The billboards show three women wearing bulky gas masks and the slogan, "There's an easier way to protect yourself from the flu."
Also for the first time, pregnant women are being urged to get a flu shot, and a growing number of businesses and employers are providing the shots at work or in community settings, such as malls and grocery stores.
"Flu shots are now about 15 percent of what we do," says Bill Leichman, chief executive officer of ProActive Health Services in Queensgate, a firm that provides health and wellness programs to companies.
ProActive's team of 25-30 nurses will administer about 32,000 flu shots at 800-850 sites in the Tristate -- office buildings, fitness centers, government agencies and more. That compares with 28,000 shots at 775 sites in 1997.
"The vast majority of them are school institutions or private companies," Mr. Leichman says. "We want to catch people where they are and be convenient for them -- that's why we go to the company sites."
United Home Care, through its Health and Wellness Program, is again providing flu shots at 125 Kroger stores, 25 Drug Emporium stores and 150 corporate sites and hopes to reach more than the 28,000 who were immunized at its sites in 1997.
Fueling the flu-shot campaign this year is the Health Improvement Collaborative of Greater Cincinnati, a coalition of health-care providers, businesses, health departments, schools, government agencies and groups. It's coordinated through the Greater Cincinnati Health Council.
The collaborative has established the hot line in hopes of immunizing 243,000 high-risk individuals in the Tristate's eight-county area, says spokeswoman Sonya Hall. The group is targeting people 65 and older (including residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities), health-care workers and caregivers of people with chronic health problems.
"Those are the people most at risk of getting complications from the flu," Ms. Hall says. "Twenty thousand people a year die from the flu (nationwide), so it's no small matter."
Health trackers from the U.S. Centers from Disease Control already have traced strains of the Sydney Type A flu to several hundred travelers and tourism workers in Alaska during July and August. That strain is included in this year's flu vaccine.
New this year on the list of people urged to get a flu shot are pregnant women who will be in the second or third trimester of pregnancy (months 4-9) during peak flu season, which typically runs November through March and is usually worst in January and February. "Research has shown that pregnant women are more likely to develop complications from influenza, such as pneumonia, than are young adults in the same age group," says Dr. W. Paul Glezen, epidemiologist at the Influenza Research Center at Baylor College of medicine in Houston. The risk of complications is 4.5 times greater in the last three months of pregnancy, he says.
Why do some people decide to not get a flu shot?
Some older people still recall unpleasant side effects -- fever, headache, muscle aches, fatigue -- from vaccines given in the 1940s and 1950s, says CDC press officer Barbara Reynolds. Because those side effects mimicked flu symptoms, many people believed the vaccines actually caused the flu.
But newer vaccines are purer than earlier vaccines, and side effects are estimated to be mild in the 5 percent to 10 percent of people who have a reaction. Most complaints revolve around muscle aches or a low-grade fever about a day after the flu shot, she says.
![[flu shot]](/editions/1998/09/24/shot_500x352.jpg)