The Medical Association of the Zenne Valley organized another major vaccination campaign at the Medical House in Buizingen on Wednesday afternoon, during which about fifty general practitioners from the entire region were vaccinated against flu together. They have been doing this in front of the camera for over twenty years to set a good example. “Flu can make people seriously ill. A vaccine can prevent this.”
“If people see that we are vaccinated ourselves, this will hopefully convince them to get a flu shot themselves,” says GP André Lerminiaux, who has been the vaccinator for the Zennevallei Doctors Association for many years. “We obviously do this to protect ourselves because we constantly come into contact with sick people. But on the other hand, we also protect our other patients by not passing on the virus. We especially recommend the elderly, young people with conditions, pregnant women and people who work in healthcare to be vaccinated. That is the message of this flu vaccination campaign.”
“We have been doing this exemplary campaign for more than twenty years now and we see that it still has an effect,” says André Lerminiaux. “The flu shot is now well established. People spontaneously ask us about it. We see that many more people than before are getting vaccinated.”
The annual flu epidemic is expected after New Year’s. According to the Artsenkring, getting vaccinated now is good timing to be sufficiently protected in time. “People sometimes think they have the flu when they have a runny nose or a fever. But believe me, that’s not real flu. The real flu makes people seriously ill. People still die from flu, especially in combination with other underlying problems,” says André Lerminiaux. “The Spanish flu killed millions of people in Europe just after the First World War. That was in fact also a normal flu as we know it today. The difference is that vaccines now exist and we now have better medicines.”
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