New data confirm the obvious: Unvaccinated health care workers put others at risk

While the EPA was busy creating needless regulations, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) was warning Americans about a very real public health threat, one about which ACSH has also been an active voice. Shockingly, only about forty percent of U.S. health care workers have been vaccinated against the flu. APIC, like ACSH, believes that vaccination of health care workers should be mandatory.

Last week, ACSH Trustee Dr. Paul Offit spoke about this subject during a presentation at the Manhattan Institute. Dr. Offit discussed his campaign to achieve universal vaccination among employees at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where he is Chief of Infectious Disease. In the absence of mandatory vaccination, he commented, some infants each year would die in the hospital from cases of flu brought on by exposure from the hospital’s own staff. CHOP now has a 90 percent compliance rate and workers that refuse the flu vaccination may be terminated.

ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross says “the reluctance of healthcare workers to be vaccinated is absolutely unacceptable. If we can require children to get their shots before going to school, we should require it of health care workers before going to work.”