There are three important factors about health care for patients - and only three!
- Effectiveness, we want to get better...
- Safety, we don't want the treatment to harm us...
- Cost, treatment should not be expensive, it should not threaten to bankrupt the NHS...
The flu vaccine prevents us from getting flu. That, at least, is what we are told by the conventional medical establishment. They tell us that the treatment is effective, safe, and it is not exorbitantly expensive.
So, with this belief, the NHS tries every year to persuade us to be vaccinated, apparently without significant success. The GP magazine, Pulse, has reported that "Extra GP phone calls and messages failed to boost flu vaccine uptake". According to Pulse, a GP surgery in east London targeted patients in three key 'at-risk' groups, older people over-65, COPD patients, and patients with diabetes. They did so "in a bid to boost vaccine uptake and improve their QOF achievement scores". So in December (2016) the practice contacted patients in these groups by text messages, emails and telephone calls to home and mobile phones.
Pulse says that GP practices are under increasing pressure from NHS England to boost flu vaccine uptake. Coverage in 2015 fell, and with children and younger people, uptake has fallen for the previous three years.
Another pressure, not mentioned in the article, but in a comment from a GP, is that doctors are paid for every patient they vaccinate.
The campaign was a failure. Pulse reported that the proportion of patients vaccinated went up 5% with diabetes patients, 3% with COPD patients, and actually declined by 1% with older patients. The team concluded:
"This study shows that attempts to intensify patient notification ..... had no significant impact on improving QOF flu vaccine uptake targets... The two main reasons for this appear to be difficulty in contacting patients and a general lack of interest in getting the flu vaccine among the contacted population despite convenient and accessible flu clinics being organised."
Pulse says that this was put down mainly "to misconceptions about the vaccine - that it is unnecessary and causes a range of adverse side effects - as well as health and mobility problems that prevented patients from coming in".
Or is the growing resistance to the flu vaccine, and vaccines generally, a growing awareness that they are ineffective, unsafe, and not cost effective? As one doctor comments:
"Can we just remind everyone that there is no evidence anywhere from any country in any year that mass inoculation population flu vaccination of anyone over 5yrs of age has any effect on anything other than politician's ego and pharmaceutical's profits. It's non evidence based medicine and should be shunned."
So perhaps patient resistance has less to do with 'misconceptions', and more to do with effectiveness and patient harm. Certainly this blog has gone over both these issues. I will not rehearse them here, again, but here are just a few of the links to articles I have previously written.
Flu Vaccine. Is it worth the serious risks involved?
Preventing Colds and Flu's this winter
The Flu Vaccine
The Flu Vaccine that causes Narcolepsy? Pandemrix
Avian flu, a new epidemic. What can conventional medicine do?
Alzheimer's disease and the flu vaccine
There are others, all pointing to the ineffectiveness and dangers of the flu vaccine; they can be found by searching within the blog-site. Yet perhaps the most interesting feature of this season's flu vaccination campaign can be seen in what is happening within our hospitals. Last night I watched my local news bulletin on the BBC. This was dominated by the warning that our hospitals were under immense 'winter' pressures. The hospitals at Leicester, Milton Keynes, Northampton and Kettering were all operating under a 'black alert', meaning that they were operating at 100% capacity. One of the reasons given was the number of people visiting hospital with flu-symptoms!
Now, who are these people with flu symptoms? Are they the patients who have not had their flu vaccination? Or are they the people who have had their flu vaccination? The question needs to be asked, although I suspect there will be no answer. And there will be no answer because a large number of these flu victims will be those who have had their flu vaccination!
So we spend money on vaccinations, only for our hospitals to be placed on black alert! Conventional medicine does not treat illness successfully. It actually creates illness. They it cannot cope. Then it demands even more resources, to spend on drugs and vaccines that don't work, and increase levels of sickness. It has long been so.
This is not what the conventional medical establishment wants us to hear! That many people who have had the flu vaccine are getting flu, or something similar. But it happens regularly, children are vaccinated against measles, and they are amongst the population who contract measles. Children are vaccinated against mumps, and they are amongst the population who contract mumps. It is part of the growing evidence that unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children. The scientific journal that originally published the results withdrew the study from publication. This has been reported in several websites, including the Waking Times.
"The abstract of the study was published online in Frontiers in Public Health after being accepted November 2 (2016). The study compared children’s health via surveys of mothers who home-schooled their children aged 6-12 years. Nearly 40 percent of the children had never been vaccinated, so the control group was adequate to do a good comparison against children who had been vaccinated. After heavy criticism from the public and scientific community due to the results of the study.... it was retracted. Why? Those that were vaccinated were three times more likely to be diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism."
So, is the poor uptake of the flu vaccine the result of patient 'misconceptions'? (And why is it that the conventional medical establishment always blames the patient for ill-health?) Or is it because patients are now more aware of the ineffectiveness, and the dangers of the flu vaccination, and they are making a personal, reasoned choice.
If the NHS were really interested in reducing flu, this winter or any winter, it would look to more effective, and safer treatments for flu. This is what everyone needs to do, and the conventional health system fails rapidly. Look at this website to compare the conventional treatment of flu with homeopathic treatment.
Homeopathy offers everything the patient needs. Safety. Effectiveness. And minimum expense.
