Dubbo residents queued for free influenza (flu) vaccinations on Friday as the Western NSW Local Health District confirmed the preventable infection had killed people in the region in 2017.
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How many is yet to be determined, but the health district’s manager health protection Priscilla Stanley says there is “no doubt” of deaths from flu in its facilities last year.
Ms Stanley said the 2017 flu season had been “extreme” with almost 3000 notifications of laboratory-confirmed flu cases in the health district, compared with about 600 in 2016.
She said the data did not include people suffering from flu who did not see a doctor to have the infection confirmed.
“There was most likely a larger number than 3000 in our communities who suffered from flu last year,” she said.
The health district has been alerting communities to the danger of flu, responsible for about 650 deaths in NSW in 2017.
After “one of the worst flu seasons on record last year”, Ms Stanley has promoted vaccinations as offering the “best protection”.
Soon after 10am on Friday she was “pleasantly surprised” by the crowd of adults and children waiting to be vaccinated inside Dubbo Regional Council’s Civic Administration Building and the growing queue outside.
Almost 800 vaccines were on hand but Ms Stanley was worried some people would be “disappointed”. “I anticipate that we will exhaust our supply of vaccines,” she said after reminding the community that vaccinations were being done at the likes of GP surgeries and pharmacies.
Ms Stanley said Dubbo was one of about 10 communities in NSW to host a free flu vaccination clinic as part of a statewide bid to raise awareness of the potentially life-saving jabs.
She puts the 2017 epidemic down to a strain of flu that spread “very, very rapidly across our communities” and probably not enough people getting vaccinated.
“But it also comes down to some basic hygiene and some really practical ideas,” Ms Stanley said. “Hand hygiene is incredibly important along with coughing into your elbow.”
Ms Stanley is urging people with flu not to go to school or work.
She revealed that flu was circulating in the health district but there was no way of knowing “what sort of flu season we’re going to experience” from now until September or October.
Lara Sutcliffe, her husband and three young daughters, were among the throng getting free flu shots. “We got hit by bad colds last year,” she said. “We wanted to make sure we all got vaccinated to protect each other.”