Smileband health topics

The annual flu epidemic has suddenly become serious. Few could have missed the alarming headlines last week about the dramatic rise in cases — GP consultations for ‘flu’ up by 78 per cent, hospital admissions up by 50 per cent and intensive care admissions up by 65 per cent compared with the week before. Nearly 2,000 people have now been hospitalised because of complications owing to this year’s flu outbreak, according to Public Health England — and 85 have died as a result.

Worryingly, the danger is far from over, with the flu season set to last at least to the end of February, and possibly as late as May, according to the Department of Health’s Communicable Disease Centre.

It’s not the flu virus itself that claims lives, but ‘almost always flu-related pneumonia, the most common cause of death from flu’, explains Dr Ben Marshall, a consultant respiratory physician at Southampton General Hospital. It’s been reported that the tragic death this month of Bethany Walker, 18, from Applecross in Wester Ross, Scotland, was due to flu-related pneumonia.

What many people may not realise is that there is a pneumonia vaccine that can help protect against the bacteria most commonly responsible for the disease, Streptococcus pneumoniae (also known as pneumococcus). This one-off vaccine can last for up to 20 years.

But while it’s been available for 17 years and is offered for free on the NHS to at-risk groups, uptake remains low — this includes the over-65s, with around a third (four million people) declining the free jab.

Uptake is even lower among people with conditions that raise the risk of pneumonia, including long- term kidney, liver and heart problems such as congenital heart disease, anyone with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), diabetes and those having chemotherapy for cancer or on long-term steroids for severe asthma or arthritis — with just four in ten having the jab.

This is deeply worrying, says Dr Marshall. ‘We know the vaccine protects around 45 per cent of people over 65 and those with chronic illness, compared to around 70-75 per cent of those with healthy immune systems.

‘But this is still very worthwhile. For people of any age, I would recommend consideration of vaccination for pneumonia if there’s an underlying medical condition that might increase the risk of serious complications.’

Experts suspect that one reason people don’t have the jab is simply because most don’t know about it. The rate of vaccination among the general population — who have to pay a £70 fee to a pharmacy to have the jab privately — is perhaps, not surprisingly, even lower than among at-risk groups. And if they do know about the jab, many people think pneumonia is a serious concern only for people at the end of their lives.