Pharmacists Offer To Give Flu Jabs To Students

Local pharmacists volunteered on Wednesday to join the battle against influenza, saying they can help administer flu jabs to students in place of doctors and nurses.

The Hong Kong Academy of Pharmacy says the government has been neglecting the city’s 4,000-odd registered pharmacists as a precious resource, saying they’re fully capable of giving flu shots under the supervision of a doctor.

Academy president Iris Chang said she understands that a manpower shortage is hampering government vaccination programmes at local schools.

“We have 4,000 registered pharmacists in Hong Kong, and definitely, if the government needs us, we can mobilise a majority of that population to help during the flu crisis”, Chang said.

Local hospitals have been overwhelmed with flu-related cases in recent weeks, with occupancy rates consistently at above full-capacity, stretching the public healthcare system to its breaking point.

Local kindergartens and childcare centres were ordered to break for the Lunar New Year holidays a week earlier to help stem the spread of flu.

Despite the severity of flu outbreaks this year, Chang said the government shouldn’t only focus on its influenza prevention campaigns.

She noted that flu sufferers are often susceptible to developing severe complications such as pneumonia, and its vaccination programme against pneumococcus – a type of bacteria that causes the illness – must be ramped up.

She says while government subsidies for pneumococcal vaccines are only given to people over 65 and who already have high-risk conditions like diabetes or heart problems, “actually the people who have no high-risk diseases – they are as vulnerable as the people who have the disease once they have the flu.”

Chang says only around 20 percent of people here are inoculated against the flu, and pneumococcus, far short of the 60-80 percent required for the city’s population to develop a ‘herd-immunity’ against the diseases – which raises the entire community’s resistance to the illnesses.