Health care workers Must be Vaccinated

by Moonjo Kim

We feel at ease to hear that it is now available for vaccinations for swine flu. However, with vaccine production lagging, we are encountered with another issue. Who should be in first priority of getting the vaccines? Should it be children? Or pregnant women? Or health care workers?

State officials say that first priority for the swine flu vaccine should go to two groups consider especially high risk: some 252,000 pregnant women and some 6.4 million young people (between the ages of 6 months and 24 years). Agreeing to this, Governor David Paterson of New York and his health commissioner have suspended requirements to get vaccinated for all 882,000 health care workers because there are only expecting four million doses of vaccines, which isn’t enough to cover most vulnerable groups. However, they are all wrong. Saving the vaccines for vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women may be a generous act but also an act of taking a risk not thinking beyond.

Let me explain. Making the shots mandatory for all health care workers is important as of many reasons. If these health care personnel become sick when they are needed, who will be there to help patients out? Health care workers need to be there to help patients and to make effort in persuading people to get vaccinated. Also, if they are not vaccinated, there is a chance that they may work while contagious and infect vulnerable patients, which is worse. It can cause more complications and even deaths.

These reasons should be take in considerations to make the vaccinations mandatory for health care workers. Even though the federal government has placed health care workers among the highest priority groups to get vaccinated, it is not enough!

Our belief is that health workers must be vaccinated and be required to do so because of their wide and continuing contact with already vulnerable patients.