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With flu season looming on the horizon, Dr. Jack Turco, director of the Dartmouth College Health Service, wants faculty, staff, and students to know one thing: without widespread vaccination, if there's flu, they'll get it. That's why he's encouraging everyone in the community to get a flu shot and get it early.
"We're hoping that if we provide the flu shots in the fall, we'll have a few weeks before anyone is exposed to the virus. You need a few weeks for your body to form flu antibodies," he says.
The College is offering free flu shots to all its employees, courtesy of the Office of Human Resources. Three flu shot clinics for faculty and staff have been scheduled, the first on Tuesday, October 24 in Tindle Lounge at Thayer Dining Hall from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and the second on Thursday, November 9, in the Health Service Library at Dick's House from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The final flu clinic is on Wednesday, November 15, in the Health Service Library at Dick's House from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Students are also encouraged to get vaccinated through the College Health Service. Student clinics are posted online.)
Turco says that while vaccination is most critical for people over 65, young children, infants older than six months, and people with chronic illnesses, in a community as close-knit as Hanover, it makes the most sense for as many people as possible to get vaccinated. "You try to immunize enough people to get 'herd immunity.' If between 70 to 90 percent of the population is vaccinated, then you've created a situation where it's very difficult for an outbreak to take hold. Getting the vaccine protects you, but indirectly, it also protects your colleagues."
In past years, Dartmouth's community participation has varied, from 1,120 staff and faculty and 1,644 students in 2003 to 797 staff and faculty and 1,020 students in 2005. (In 2004, vaccine was in short supply and less than 900 total vaccinations were delivered.) This year, the College Health Service hopes to see those numbers increase.
Turco explains that the vaccine is an inactivated virus, which cannot result in a vaccinated person developing flu. Some recipients, about 5 to 10 percent, do develop mild side effects, usually soreness or swelling at the injection site and sometimes headaches, fatigue, or low-grade fever for a day or two. But, he emphasizes, it's still better to be protected against the flu. "If you're not young and healthy, the flu can be deadly."
The vaccine is a trivalent vaccine, meaning that it has been developed to immunize against the three strains of flu most likely to appear this winter. Turco points out that the vaccine won't protect against everything-it's no defense against the common cold, and it wouldn't protect against a pandemic flu if one developed-but it's likely to prevent the contraction, and more importantly, the spread of influenza.
With or without the flu shot, however, Turco wants to remind people that good hygiene and frequent hand washing can also slow the spread of disease. "Look around campus for the hand sanitizers that have been installed," he says, "and use them frequently."
By GENEVIEVE HAAS
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