Tag Archives: Northern Ireland

Extra flu vaccine ordered

Leave a reply

An extra two million flu vaccines have been ordered and an emergency “shot-pile” is being set up as health officials prepare for the flu season.

Last year there were reports of local shortages with older jabs being used to fill the shortfall.

The Chief Medical Officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said the contingency supply would be used to “smooth things out”.

Pregnant women and other at risk groups are all recommended to take the jab.

Last year, 14.7 million shots were ordered. For this winter 16.7 million have been ordered and 400,000 will be kept in reserve.

For the second year running there will be no advertising campaign in England to raise awareness, unlike in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Prof Davies questioned the usefulness of adverts, saying people “listen to trusted sources, not government”.

Influenza

Influenza

She is instead relying on health workers, charities and pharmacies to target those at risk.

Bags of medicine from the pharmacist will carry messages encouraging people to have the jab as “patients in at risk groups are taking medicines,” she said.

Last winter more than 600 people in the UK died as a direct result of catching flu.

The vaccine itself, based on advice from the World Health Organization, will again protect against swine flu (H1N1) as well as the H3N2 and Flu B strains.

These are the same three viruses as last winter, but the government’s director of immunisation, Prof David Salisbury, warned patients they would be gambling if they were not immunised again this year.

“You actually need it just as much as last year,” he said.


He warned there was no evidence that last year’s shot would still offer protection and that “it’s playing high risk stakes thinking you’re protected”.

Prof Davies again criticised healthcare workers who did not get vaccinated, saying they were “selfish” for not protecting their patients.

Last year 35% were vaccinated, up from 26% the year before.

Prof Salisbury said there had been renewed attempts to “persuade, influence and cajole employees”, but there also needed to be improvements within hospitals to make it easier for staff to get vaccinated.

He said that at Birmingham Children’s Hospital Foundation NHS Trust, 95% of front-line staff had had the seasonal flu jab, but that figure was as low as 10% in other areas.

The great bottled water rip off

Leave a reply

Bottled water or tap water? The answer very much depends on how much you believe the hype.

Many Brits certainly do. Bottled water is a £2 billion business annually in the UK, and brands from across the world compete for precious shelf space.

It’s big business, and it’s global: About a quarter of all bottled water is exported to another country, or about 22 million tonnes of it annually.

So why buy it? A study by Birmingham University found that people tend to believe that bottled water is somehow healthier, but don’t know why.

Perhaps because it costs more. Bottled water costs around 500 times more compared to the stuff that comes out of the tap. A survey of bottled waters by consumer watchdog Which even found a bottled variety that cost 13,000 times more than tap.

Manufacturers would have you believe that bottled water is naturally cleaner, tastier and more “microbiologically wholesome,” than tap water.

You can’t begrudge them their wily marketing, but many in fact get their water from – wait for it – municipal water systems, the same place that your tap water comes from.

And there is nothing natural about the way many bottled waters land on your restaurant table or shop shelf.

Aside from the oil used to manufacture the plastic containers, bottled water has a much higher carbon footprint per litre than tap.

Bottled water

Bottled water

Producing and transporting bottle water results in hundreds of times more CO2 emissions per litre and that’s before considering the impact the plastic bottles have on the environment – only around a quarter are recycled.

Ok, so it’s not ‘green’ to drink bottled water, but what about health? Isn’t tap water full of bad stuff?

If you live in a country where water standards may be poor, or even dangerous, then you have cause for concern.

But if you live in Britain, you can rest assured that it has been filtered, chlorinated and tested extensively, and is perfectly safe to drink, in fact, one of the safest in the world.

You may buy bottled water because it tastes so much better than the tap stuff.


But does it really? Two studies conducted in France and Northern Ireland found that water tastes like… water.

The majority of people in a blind taste test could not distinguish between bottled water and chilled tap water.

In the Irish study, the researchers wrote: “The findings from this study indicate that people cannot correctly identify bottled water on the basis of its flavour.”

This “suggests that the currently high consumer demand for this beverage must be based on factors other than taste or olfactory perception.”

That said, tap water can taste from different region to region. It may contain different amounts of minerals such as calcium and magnesium, which can affect the flavour. Some parts of Scotland have particularly soft water with low levels of calcium compared with other parts of the country.

If it bothers you that much, the solution is to pour tap water into a jug and put it in the fridge, or even buy a water filter. This ought to make it more palatable. Then smile smugly at the thought of the money you have just saved.