Healthcare workers also need protection

There is a commonly held belief that healthcare workers—the doctors, nurses, caregivers, medical technicians and those providing social works—are more resistant to diseases. They are, as we are led to believe, more knowledgeable in dealing with them.

However, Dr. Pascale Wortley of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases begged to disagree, stating that healthcare workers often mistakenly think they’re immune and because they’ve been working in such a setting for a long time, have been around sick people, they wrongly think they have natural defenses.

The truth is, healthcare providers are as vulnerable as the rest of us and are in fact more prone to being infected as they are confronted each day with the difficult task of working safely within a hazardous environment.

Healthcare workers face a wide range of hazards on the job, including needlestick injuries, and violence. Although it is possible to prevent or reduce healthcare worker exposure to these hazards, healthcare workers continue to experience injuries and illnesses in the workplace.

There is also the possibility that they could unknowingly infect patients.

Thus, the case for vaccination is clear as the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases contends that vaccination makes the vaccinated individual either immune or resistant to a disease.

More important, vaccination interferes with the contagious disease and thus, makes the entire community safer, including newborn babies or the very sick, both of whom cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

Among the three vaccines recommended under the 2012 Healthcare Workers Vaccination Recommendation by the PSMID, the Philippine Hospital Infection Control Society and the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination include those that protect against influenza, hepatitis B and tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis infections.

Helps prevent transmission

Maintaining immunity in the healthcare provider population helps prevent transmission of vaccine-preventable diseases to and from healthcare workers and patients.

Tetanus, also called lockjaw, is contracted through a cut or wound that becomes contaminated with tetanus bacteria. Such infection causes severe muscle spasms, leading to “locking” of the jaw, making it hard to open the mouth or swallow. In severe cases, tetanus infections may lead to death by suffocation. Tetanus is the only vaccine-preventable disease that is not transmitted from person to person.

In its early stages, diphtheria may be mistaken for a severe sore throat. However, it could worsen to cause breathing problems, heart failure, paralysis and sometimes death. The disease is passed from person to person by droplet transmission, usually by breathing in diphtheria bacteria after an infected person has coughed, sneezed, or even laughed.

Pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough, is a serious infection that spreads easily from person to person. The infection causes coughing spells that are so severe that it can be hard to breathe, eat, or sleep. In fact, whooping cough could even lead to cracked ribs, pneumonia or hospitalization.

Exposed

Many healthcare providers are exposed to blood or other body fluids. If such fluid is infected with the hepatitis B virus and comes in contact with the health care provider’s blood or mucous membranes (via needlestick injury while drawing blood on a patient, splash by blood or bloody fluid in the eye or mouth while changing suction tubing or working in a laboratory, or cut from a scalpel during surgery), there is a 10 to 30 percent chance of becoming infected with the hepatitis B virus.

Hepatitis B is a potentially life-threatening liver infection with symptoms that last several weeks, including yellowing of the skin and eyes (jaundice), dark urine, extreme fatigue, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Some carriers will develop chronic hepatitis that can later lead to liver failure or liver cancer. In a small number of cases, hepatitis B results in rapid liver failure and death.

Up to 95 percent of vaccinated individuals will form effective antibodies when they get the vaccine and are protected from hepatitis B.

Despite knowing that vaccination is a patient-safety imperative, many healthcare providers are still not immunized against influenza.

Healthcare institutions are trying to change this by mandating vaccination among healthcare providers as they are exposed to the influenza virus more than anyone else throughout the year.

They can easily get infected from patients admitted in healthcare facilities with the illness and unvaccinated health providers catch them unknowingly.

The single most effective way to prevent influenza, or severe consequences from the illness, is vaccination and PSMID reminded healthcare providers of the fact that they are responsible for the health of the patient and protect the patients from infecting them with influenza virus.

Influenza could be deadly especially among infants, elderly individuals and those with weakened immune systems.

Herd immunity

While most of us believe we get immunized to protect ourselves from illness, another reason that should be considered is the fact that immunization provides additional protection that comes if majority around us are also vaccinated.

Public health officials call this “herd immunity” which refers to a situation where a large number of vaccinated individuals who have become resistant to a certain disease provide protection to individuals who have not developed immunity or cannot receive vaccination.

When most people in a community are vaccinated, they function as a “firewall” against the spread of the disease, preventing further transmission of the disease into the unvaccinated individuals.