Farm workers urged to get flu shot: Swine are ?mixing vessels? for flu DNA

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is urging farmers and farm workers to get this year?s seasonal flu shot to reduce the risk of transmission of influenza viruses between livestock and humans.
Even people planning to visit a swine farm should get the shot, the agency said.
The Canadian Swine Health Board earlier this year also urged producers and farm workers to get the vaccine, but has no legal authority to require vaccinations.
CSHB executive director Robert Harding said there is some resistance among farmers to getting vaccinated. A pilot program in Prince Edward Island found that about 30 per cent of farmers and workers got the shot on their own and another 20 per cent accepted it when it was offered on site, he said.
?There is resistance in all parts of the population to getting vaccinations,? said Harding. ?Farmers are no different.?
While swine influenza does not normally infect humans, it can spread very rapidly through populations that have no inherent resistance to it. In 2009, the H1N1 swine flu virus became a global pandemic, killing 56 people in B.C., according to the B.C. Ministry of Health.
The World Health Organization reported more than 18,000 deaths worldwide from swine flu in 2009, far less than a typical flu season. But the transmission of flu viruses between humans and animals raises the risk that a dangerous new virus could be created.
Pigs are easily infected with human strains of influenza and become ?mixing vessels? for new strains of flu when swine and human strains present in the same animal swap genetic material, said Bonnie Henry, director of public health emergency management at the BC Centre for Disease Control.
A farm worker who came to Canada from Mexico ? the location of the original outbreak ? ?most likely? infected a swine herd in Alberta in 2009, according to an epidemiological investigation by the CFIA.
Several similar incidents have been recorded in the United States since then, according to Henry.
The CSHB recommends vaccinating farm workers as a best management practice for producers in the National Farm-Level Biosecurity Standard.

Read more at http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2012/...lu-shot-swine-are-mixing-vessels-for-flu-dna/
 
 
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