Influenza prevention: the most effective means of protection

It is much easier to avoid the flu than to treat it later, which is long and difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to take care of flu prevention. Many people think that flu prevention is simply not communicating with a sick person and wearing an antiviral mask. But this is not true. There are three types of flu prevention. Do you want to know which ones?

[ 1 ]

Three types of flu prevention

• Antiviral prevention of influenza by means of a vaccine. Of these, there are specific prevention and vaccine prevention
• Another type of prevention is chemoprophylaxis using antiviral agents to protect against influenza (medicines, vitamins)
• The third type of flu prevention is personal hygiene (wearing a medical mask, washing hands, etc.).

Preventing influenza with a vaccine

This is the basis of protection against all types of flu. The vaccine is one of the most reliable means of preventing flu, especially during epidemics. The immune system, which is significantly strengthened after vaccination, can cope with any cold-related disease. What can I say - vaccination helped cope with such monsters that mowed down entire cities: diphtheria, measles, polio, tetanus.

Today, when the world is threatened by flu, and scientists talk about its possible epidemics every year, vaccination will help to cope with flu viruses. The task of the vaccine is not to eliminate the disease as such, but to reduce the possibility of suffering from it. Complications after flu are especially dangerous, against which the vaccine is also a good helper. These complications primarily affect the work of the cardiovascular system, respiratory organs, blood condition, kidneys and liver.

Who needs to get vaccinated?

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends vaccination against influenza from October to December. This is especially necessary for those who are at risk: small children from six months to 15 years old, workers in public places, elderly people over 49 years old and those who suffer from chronic diseases. Pregnant women are also at risk, but they should only get the vaccine on the recommendation of a doctor and after the first trimester of pregnancy.

Flu - its types - also differ from each other. If we exclude different types of "animal" flu, that is, swine, chicken and so on, then flu is divided into seasonal (when people get sick mainly in winter) and common - throughout the year. Common flu is a disease of younger people and children, so it is very important to vaccinate in kindergartens, schools, secondary and higher educational institutions and barracks.

After mass vaccination	Decrease in morbidity by %
Cases of inpatient treatment of elderly people	48%
Fatalities among the elderly	55–68%
Influenza cases in healthy people under 65 years of age	75–90%
Cases of influenza infection in children after vaccination	62–90%
Acute otitis in schoolchildren	31–36%

How effective is the flu vaccine?

Many people care about the side effects of vaccination and, most importantly, how much it reduces the likelihood of contracting the flu. For more than six decades, doctors have been using flu vaccines - the main prevention of flu. It happens that medical institutions receive reports of side effects after a flu shot, but they are very rare and are probably explained by intolerance to some substances in the vaccine.

Read also: Flu shots: 12 most popular myths

Side effects of the body, which doctors usually warn about before vaccination, can be flu-like symptoms. These are muscle or headache pain, fever - no higher than 37.5 degrees, redness or slight swelling at the injection site. All these symptoms are rather mild and usually go away within a day or two. According to statistics, only 1 in a million people experience severe side effects after vaccination against flu, so you don’t have to be afraid to get vaccinated.

If you want the vaccine to not cause any health complications, you should warn your doctor about all the illnesses you have had in the month before vaccination. And also about allergies to any drugs, especially to chicken egg white, which is the basis for most vaccines. The vaccine should not be administered to people who:

• Have you ever had an allergy to egg white, a component of the vaccine?
• Have you had or are currently suffering from a cold or chronic disease in the acute stage?
• Had allergies to vaccinations in other years
• Patients with fever and pain of any origin
• Children under six months
• Pregnant women in the first trimester

Be that as it may, the protective properties of vaccination significantly exceed the possible risks that may arise from its administration. For example, the number of hospitalizations with influenza and the number of complications, as well as the number of fatal outcomes due to influenza, are significantly reduced.

Compliance with personal hygiene rules

Flu prevention also involves maintaining personal hygiene. It is very important to wash your hands often, treat furniture surfaces in the house as often as possible, and stay away from people who have the flu. In extreme cases, wear a medical mask. But change it every three hours, otherwise viruses and bacteria will attack you even more, accumulating on this mask.

[ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ], [ 5 ], [ 6 ]

How is flu transmitted?

Flu is spread from person to person by airborne droplets, that is, through sneezing, coughing, and also by shaking hands. When sneezing and coughing, droplets of saliva fly around within a radius of two meters and infect everything around. The flu virus enters the human body through the respiratory tract and settles on the mucous membranes of the throat and nasal passages. Then it penetrates the body's cells and forces them to produce similar viruses, and the cell itself dies.

At this time, the human body is saturated with toxins - the products of the vital activity of viruses. Because of this, the person's whole body aches, his head hurts, the muscles of the whole body hurt. The person becomes irritable, he has increased weakness, he may not get enough sleep, the temperature rises significantly. All these are symptoms of the flu, which pass within one to two weeks. If you care about the prevention of the flu, then it is important for you to know that a person with the flu is most contagious during the first three days, and children - two to three times longer - from seven to 10 days.

How long does the flu virus live?

Those who care about such an event as flu prevention should know that the virus lives on surfaces that are not disinfected for two to eight hours. And then it dies. But the temperature for it to die is quite high - up to 100 degrees, that is, the boiling point. Therefore, it is advisable to wash the patient's clothes and your own during the flu season in very hot water. Bactericidal agents are good for killing the virus - alcohol, iodine, soap (alkaline). Hydrogen peroxide is also very good.

Nowadays, many pharmacies and supermarkets sell bactericidal products for treating hands and surfaces. It is very good to take them with you where you can’t always wash your hands. For example, on business trips. And the flu virus will be defeated with your simplest efforts.

So, to avoid complications from the flu and the flu itself, it is very important not to sit back. Flu prevention can significantly reduce the risk of getting sick and save time that you would otherwise spend on treatment.