Doctors To Head Flu Jab Campaign In 200 Schools

Health officials said on Wednesday that they will send doctors into 200 primary schools in the city in October to vaccinate students against influenza ahead of the next winter flu season.

A low vaccination rate of around only 20 percent of children in the SAR has been blamed for outbreaks of the disease in previous flu seasons.

The Controller of the Centre for Health Protection, Dr Wong Ka-hing, said he hoped the school vaccination pilot programme will increase the take-up rate to at least 40 percent of children.

"In other places, say in Macau, their school outreach programme had a coverage rate of about 70 percent, which is pretty good. We don't know whether we can reach this, but that is basically what we estimate at the moment," Wong said.

Wong also predicted that the current winter flu season will be over as soon as the end of this month.

He said the latest data shows the number of hospital admissions because of flu, and the number of outbreaks of flu in schools, have both dropped recently.

But he said people who haven’t received a flu vaccination this season could still get the jab.