Talk about health

Today I want to have a little rant about flu vaccines. It has become an annual media event when it is announced that there will be a shoratge of flu vaccines this year, and every other year in recent memory.

I remember when, about 20 years ago, there were several manufacturers of it and they competed on price and availability. The resut was the patient always go the vaccine if they wanted it and the costs to the health sevices was kept down. In this case at least, competition worked.

Then the number of producers declined to two and everything changed. All of a sudden, prices rose steadily and the now yearly shortages began to appear. There was always a problem of either the strain of flu to be included in it or difficulties at the production units.

At first, I could understand these problems. They happen to all kinds of products in all walks of life. But then, I became a bit more cynical. Just consider what the publicity does to the numbers of vaccines used.

It's human nature to want something just as soon as you know it is in short supply. Every Christmas there is THE toy that suddenly has dwindling numbers for sale. The queues for it get longer by the minute.

And it's the same with flu vaccines. Simply because there might not be enough to go around, everyone really needs it, and right now!

Who benefits? I'll give you one guess ... that's right - the manufacturer. It will be able to sell every unit it makes because demand outstrips production all through the vaccine season.

This year, too, there has been a research finding that pregnant women might benefit from having the vaccine so ther babies can resist the chance that their immune system might not be up to scratch once they are born.

So, the manufacturers will have yet another market to exploit.

On the other side, one professor of medicine has got into print saying that he doubts the percieved benefits of having the flu vaccine in the first place.

There is a body of medical opinion, still in the minority, that vaccination against flu just doesn't change the mortality rate at all. The same number of people die each year despite mass vaccination.

Perhaps we should just work on our general health and immune system by eating well, exercising and taking the occasional supplement. then we can forget the yearly dash to shove money into the drug companies' and doctors' hands.

Just a thought!

Let me know what you think. Reply to this post or visit my site at http://www.healthexplored.co.uk to get in touch and join my newsletter list, it's FREE.