vaccines

In an effort to prevent health care workers from spreading the flu to patients this winter, county health officials are mandating that medical staff around the Bay Area receive vaccinations or wear a surgical mask on the job.

Health officials say flu vaccination rates among health care workers are dangerously low – 60 percent [PDF] of those working in California hospitals received the vaccine in the 2010-11 flu season, according to the most recent data available from the California Department of Public Health.

Officials hope the requirements will help prevent the spread of the virus to patients most vulnerable to its life-threatening complications, particularly the elderly, whose weakening immune systems may render the flu vaccine less effective.

However, county health officers say they have few resources to enforce the new orders, leaving it up to the discretion of hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis centers and other health care facilities to make sure their staffs are vaccinated.

Nationally, this year’s flu season has started early and may be shaping up to be a bad one, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among those locally requiring vaccination or masks this year are health officials in San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties. Scattered counties around the state are doing the same.

Lack of sleep won’t just saddle you with unsightly bags and dark circles under your eyes: It also can make you more susceptible to disease. 

New research from a team of California and Pennsylvania scientists has found a direct link between sleep and the effectiveness of vaccines.

Healthy adults who get less than six hours of sleep a night don’t get protection from vaccines, the researchers found.

“I hope this becomes a wake-up call, not just for public health advocates and doctors, but for everyone,” said Aric Prather, an psychoneuroimmunologist at UC San Francisco and author of the study. “We need to stress sleep as an element of maintaining good health.”

The study appeared this week in the journal Sleep.

It is fairly well established that sleep affords many benefits and that a lack of sleep can make people susceptible to all sorts of maladies, including respiratory illness. 

And scientists previously have looked into the role that sleep plays in terms of boosting the effectiveness of vaccines – it does. However, those studies were done in controlled laboratory settings with college-age students, who generally are considered to have superior immune systems.  

Two quirks in California law run counter to the efforts of public health officials who are hoping to put a lid on the rapidly spreading whooping cough epidemic in the state.

California is one of 11 states that do not require children to get a booster when they enter middle school, which is when the shots usually given during childhood tend to wear off.

In an abundance of caution, officials are asking everyone age 7 and above to get a booster, with particular emphasis on those who are around infants.

So far this year, six young babies have died of the ailment, which causes fits of coughing so severe that those with the tiniest lungs can suffocate.

Scholars pointed out another aspect of California law that lends to the spread of the ailment: It is uniquely easy here for parents to cite personal beliefs as a basis for skipping routine vaccinations when kids enter kindergarten.

Some states require a letter explaining the basis decision to exempt a child from vaccines or a notarized form, according to a 2006 study published in the Journal of American Medical Association. Not so in the Golden State, according to the study: