By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
A study indicates that, if parents get enough of their children immunized against the flu, flu is less likely even among people who didn’t get immunized. It’s called herd immunity, and it happens when there are fewer cases of flu to spread.
Researcher Cuc Tran of the University of Florida saw this in data on 5- to 17-year-old students in Alachua County. Half of the county’s students in that age range were vaccinated, but flu rates for all in that range fell by almost 80 percent.
This still left a lot of sick students, and Tran says:
“We hope that our findings encourage parents to vaccinate themselves and their children against the flu.”
The study in the journal PLOS ONE was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at healthfinder.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.