[Anti-flu prophylaxis in the opinion of primary care physicians and specialists]. / Profilaktyka przeciwgrypowa zadaniem lekarzy podstawowej opieki zdrowotnej i specjalistów.

Epidemics of influenza occurring each year in Poland in winter are a serious health problem and bring underestimated financial losses. Complications from influenza are the main threat to health and life of very young and very old people or those who are chronically ill. Economic consequences, especially those of health care and absenteeism at work and school, are underestimated. All of them may be made less intense by the influenza vaccinations. Unfortunately, this is the influenza vaccine that is the less often used for prophylactic purposes. It seems that the main cause is that most physicians and patients have little knowledge about the seriousness of the complications and the possibility of avoiding them by applying the vaccination. However, according to the unanimous opinion of experts, artificial immunisation is the most sufficient way of individual and mass protection against the catastrophic results connected with the disease and its complications. It should become a rule that each patient who is a member of high-risk group for complications of influenza, should be advised by his or her physician to take the vaccination every year to avoid the consequences of possible influenza. In order to obtain the maximum protection level, the members of high-risk group and the people who are in close contact with them should be the subjects of a vaccination schedule. The Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) has appointed the groups of particular indications for influenza vaccination. The frequent reason of giving up the vaccination is a wrong conviction that the influenza vaccination may often cause complications or even influenza itself. In fact, serious complications after the vaccination, in modern terminology called Adverse Event Following Immunisation (AEFI), are extremely rare, and after the vaccination they are almost always connected with previously undistinguished allergy to the components of the vaccination, what makes a contraindication. Vaccination of members of the high-risk group each year before the influenza season in now the most sufficient way of the reduction of financial and health losses made by an epidemic of influenza. Primary-care physicians and specialists are to play a special role in prevention by advising their patients to be vaccinated and by organising mass vaccinations. The influenza vaccination should be one of the basic medical procedures in health care in case of the members of high-risk group. It should also become one of the services financed by social health insurance.

Risk of HCV infections among children with cancer and health-care workers in children's hospitals.

After the outbreak of an endemy of HCV infections in the paediatric haematology and oncology wards, epidemiological analysis was performed for cancer children, health-care workers and controls. The study included a total of 639 persons, divided into four groups. The results were as follows: 1) The number of infected paediatric cancer patients was 100/237 (42.4%). 2) Of the 44 health-care workers in the haemato-oncology ward none was infected with HCV. 3) In the other parts of the hospital, five out of 258 (1.9%) permanently employed staff at risk of occupational exposure to blood and other body fluids were infected with HCV; however, the infection rate included only nurses (5/125, i.e. 4%). 4) One hundred adults consecutively tested for anti-HCV antibodies before a planned surgical procedure were not infected with HCV (control group). This study shows that complex nonspecific prophylaxis and full awareness in everyday work has helped to prevent transmission of HCV from highly contagious patients to medical personnel, particularly to nurses who have the highest occupational risk.