Even though it is the middle of the summer here in the Southern Hemisphere, it is time to start thinking about the forthcoming Influenza season.

I usually try and predict how “severe” each season is going to be, based on past seasons and what is happening on the other side of the world. However I am wrong as often as I am right. Of some comfort is the fact that people with much more Influenza expertise than me have similar success rates when trying to predict Influenza seasons. It is a little bit like trying to predict the stockmarket. Equally difficult to predict is which individuals are going to suffer from Influenza and which ones are going to get very sick.

However what we can predict is the following:

1) Influenza has the capability of causing severe illness and occasionally death.

2) The Influenza vaccine will give good coverage against most of the circulating Influenza strains.

For the reasons above I happily take my Influenza vaccine thankyou very much. Life is too short to suffer or die from what is a largely preventable illness most of the time.

Michael

Over the next two to three weeks I will be focusing on building up the “resource” part of this website, with powerpoints, tutorials and MCQs etc. To create time for this I will reduce the daily posts to 3-4/week. Any feedback is much appreciated!