Friday, December 3, 2010

Be proactive! Get vaccinated!


      After a year, when we struggled from epidemic to pandemic swine flu, we are again in the good season to get vaccinated. Winter is here, and if you didn’t know the extreme fluctuation of the temperatures, put the flu virus in the position to multiply, replicate and to spread in the population, especially in the big cities where the population or the traffic are higher.
     Where can we catch the virus? Especially in every means of transportation as planes, metros, buses, in every places which reunite a large number of people , as airports, railway stations, metro stations, but also at festivities or cinema, theater, spectacles, in the workplace etc.  In all these places is enough a person with flu to sneeze or to cough and like this, the virus rapidly will spread from one to another.
The virus needs probably 24-48h to replicate in your body, before the symptoms can be seen. Symptoms like fever, chills, malaise, extreme fatigue, sneeze, cough, runny or stuffy nose, sore throat, headache, muscles pain can be expected.
     Who has more chances to catch the flu? There are some categories as the children less than 5 years old, the pregnant women, every adult after 65 years old, and people with different chronic diseases as: diabetes, chronic lung diseases, cardiac diseases, HIV positives, AIDS, with tuberculosis, cancers, blood diseases and people with a bad immunity.
A  person with a bad lifestyle,  who make a lot of excesses, who doesn’t exercise, who doesn’t eat healthy, doesn’t sleep well,  who has a lot of stress in life, is the most predisposed because his immunity will decrease.
       What to do? Get vaccinated. After the avian and swine flu, I know a lot of people refused to get vaccinated, because they were circumspects regarding the vaccines for these two.
I understand them completely, but they must to know that every year, the prepared vaccine is different, because the researchers have the ability to find the most probable virus which will spread every year and the vaccine is made for this most probable strain of virus.
This year beside the vaccine for H1N1 (swine flu), the most offered vaccine is for the H3N2 and the B-strain of the virus.
It is our choice if we get vaccinated or not, and we have the chance to choose this year between these vaccines. Because this year the chances to reappear the swine flu are so low, I recommend the other vaccine.
       It is in our power to do something, because even if we don’t get sick, we can be just transmitters of the virus and spreading it to your family or to other people.
Not to forget, avoid agglomeration in this period of time, sneeze or cough in your handkerchief, wash your hands regularly, eat healthy and avoid stress, hydrate yourself and finally take zinc and Echinacea supplements to boost your immunity.  
Update: It is confirmed that in Canada , this winter, the predominant strain of virus is H3N2, that's why you can avoid safely the swine flu vaccine, because the pandemia is gone. 
It is not late to get your vaccine!

4 comments:

  1. Bonjour,est-ce que je peux savoir, si on peux acheter le vaccin dans les pharmacies, ici au Quebec? Comment il s'appelle? On peut lui retrouver gratuit en quelque part? Merci

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  2. Bonjour Michel, C'est sur qu’on peut lui retrouver dans les pharmacies, si non il peut être commandé. Le nom diffère, ça dépend de la pays de provenance. En generale, le vaccin de l'année 2010-2011 s'appelle Fluarix ou Afluria et c'est un vaccin combiné qui te protège pour plusieurs types de influenza, incluant le type porcine. Les viruses qui ont été utilisés pour la fabrication sont morts donc, reste tranquil, il n'y a pas des périls réels. Il y a ici au Québec plusieurs cliniques de vaccination qui son arrondées aux CLSC et partout ils font la vaccination gratuitement.C'est payé par RAMQ. Si tu as de maladies chroniques ou tu es après 65 ans, c'est un très bonne idée d'aller te vacciner.

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  3. Hi Diana, just found your blog! Nice work.
    We did not get the Flu vaccine yet, thanks for the reminder :), hopefully we will get it by the end of the season.

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  4. Thanks Catalina, for your feedback. I appreciate.

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