Vaccines for adults are both crucial and challenging, here's why
Vaccines for adults might be less discussed but have an important role to play in keeping them healthy. The monthly newsletter from the Directorate General of Health Services notes that many childhood vaccine-preventable infections are now found among adults.
Just as an overview of the magnitude of the challenge consider this- the number of Hepatitis B carriers in India is estimated to be over 40 million. Annually, around 205,286 deaths related to chronic hepatitis occur in India.
Adult vaccination is a challenge worldwide
Tetanus causes nearly 309,000 deaths worldwide annually. Surveillance of tetanus in the United States between 1998 -2000 showed that the majority of tetanus cases occurred among persons inadequately vaccinated or with unknown vaccination history who sustained an acute injury. Adults aged 60 years and above were at highest risk for tetanus and tetanus-related death. At the workplace, sick adults mean both direct and indirect economic losses.
Dr Amit Kumar Gupta, Senior Medical Director, HCL Healthcare, says vaccination is the key to safeguarding employee well-being, diminishing absenteeism, and upholding consistent job performance.
Office spaces- with the proximity in which individuals work could be ripe grounds for disease transmission, thus vaccination serves as a protective shield of collective immunity that extends beyond individual employees.
Dr Swapnil Shikha, Consultant, Internal Medicine, Sarvodaya Hospital, Faridabad, says there is no ‘one size fits all’ for workplaces as each comes with different levels of exposure and risk.
Thus, healthcare workers who are the first to encounter infectious diseases, need influenza, hepatitis B, COVID-19 and chicken pox vaccinations. For field workers in sales, logistics, construction, or transport sectors, and all those who move from one setting to another, vaccines against influenza, tetanus-diphtheria (Tdap), and hepatitis A provide essential layers of protection.
Dr Shaik Mohammed Aslam, Head of Department and Consultant at the Department of Internal Medicine, Ramaiah Memorial Hospital, Bangalore, pointed to the adult BCG vaccination campaign initiated by the government of Karnataka as a good initiative aimed at high-risk groups like the elderly, diabetics, smokers, and malnourished adults to curb tuberculosis risk.
Vaccines thus are beyond just children and crucial for adult workplace health.
Health