Should Your Child or Pregnant Women Get The H1N1 Vaccine?
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My husband and I have been debating whether or not to get the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccination for the last couple of days. I’m not pregnant, but we have 2 small children (ages 1 year and 3 years). My husband has a respitory issue that usually requires that he get the regular flu vaccine. We aren’t sure that we have enough information to make a sound decision on whether or not to get it.
After a lot of research on the internet this morning, I don’t think that any of us will have that information for awhile either. A few pediatricians and OB/GYNs are being cautious about advising that all children and pregnant women get the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine. The CDC says that those 2 groups fall into two of the five high-risk categories, and should be vaccinated.
There are a lot of things that concern me: that this vaccination has been the fastest vaccine to be approved for use on the public, that it hasn’t been tested for more than 6 months, that it is being administered in schools that can’t properly notate in children’s medical records for any adverse reactions (especially long-term), that it hasn’t been tested on pregnant women or developing fetuses for extended periods of time (and now we are talking TWO lives), I would like to know the ingredients of the vaccine- but I can’t seem to find them listed anywhere, and that the deaths from the swine flu (while horrific to all involved) are small in comparison to deaths from the seasonal flu, and last but not least- most people who contract H1N1 (99%) get through it just fine.
Therefore, I have to balance all of the above with the flipside which is: this could become a real pandemic and potentially fatal.
I found 2 resources on the web that I thought were very helpful and balanced in gathering information on this subject. I particularly appreciated the segment on CBS news. They interviewed CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, who is (surprisingly for a news channel) skeptical about the vaccine,and NVIC’s Barbara Loe Fisher. The other source I found helpful was Dr. Robert Sears, who said,
“ I can’t make a recommendation until I have that information. We also don’t know what the side effects will be. Will they be similar to the regular flu vaccine? Will they be more severe or less? There has been much worry over this issue because of reports that the last time the country had to produce a swine flu vaccine in the 1970s to thwart an expected outbreak (which ended up not happening), rates of Guillain-Barre reactions (GBS: temporary muscle weakness and/or paralysis) went through the roof that year. This is a known (but rare) side effect of the regular flu vaccine as well, but the reactions in the 1970s were reportedly much more than expected. So, will that be a worry with this H1N1 vaccine? We don’t know. This vaccine is different, but how different?
So, the bottom line is that I am going to reserve judgment on this issue until I see what the ingredients are and what the initial safety trials show. At that point, I still will probably not act. I will wait until the second round of safety trials are done, and wait at least a month or more for it to be used in the general population to see if GBS reactions are a worry. I definitely will not be the first office to offer the vaccine. If the safety pans out, I will then make a recommendation. But that won’t be expected until at least November. So, until then, I wouldn’t waste time and energy fretting about it. ”
