Compulsory jabs not just a shot in the dark

About five years ago, two young girls died in a Philadelphia hospital. They were being treated for cancer, and caught the flu. Their immune systems were suppressed by the assault of chemotherapy drugs, so the flu overwhelmed their bodies’ shattered defences, and killed them. For Professor Paul Offit, the hospital’s chief of infectious diseases, this was more than just a tragic accident. The deaths haunted him because both girls had caught their flu from a hospital staff member. ”No doubt,” Offit says. ”Neither of them had flu when they came into the hospital … both of them caught influenza in the hospital. ”So the question was, as a healthcare worker, working with a vulnerable population of hospitalised children, is it your right to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection? We thought the answer was ‘no’.” There is a simple way to try to prevent such deaths: hospital staff get the flu vaccination every...