With countless practitioners and other public health officials endorsing mandatory flu vaccines for health care workers, it is hard to believe that there is so much resistance.
Dr. Evan S. Levine writes in the New York Post that Dr. Steven Safyer, the Montefiore Medical Center president and CEO, told his staff in a Jan. 13 letter that that fewer than 50 percent of our associates have been vaccinated. This means the majority of our associates are at risk for illness.
Too many workers are making the wrong choice, at risk to themselves and their patients, he writes.
According to the infectious-disease doctors I ve spoken with, many New York hospitals have tried to make flu vaccination mandatory but have been beaten back by union lawyers. So they can t force even workers on an oncology floor, who care for immuno-suppressed patients on chemotherapy, to get the shot.
Too many hospital employees are now going to work thinking that they may be coming down with a cold when they actually have early stages of the flu. They work in close contact with immuno-suppressed patients, the elderly, cancer patients and others just recovering from major operations, and they re unknowingly infecting them with the flu. Hundreds of patients will likely be infected in this way and some number killed.
The saddest part comes with his concluding words: And there s nothing we can do about it.
Well, we here at ACSH disagree. We are even now working with the NYC Health & Hospitals Corporation (which runs the City s public hospitals) to implement a mandatory vaccine policy for healthcare workers. Stay tuned as developments proceed.
Click here to read Dr. Levine s superb editorial in its entirety.
