Take time to get a flu vaccine.

• CDC recommends a yearly flu vaccine as the first and most important step in protecting against flu viruses.
• While there are many different flu viruses, the flu vaccine protects against the three viruses that research suggests will be most common.
• The 2011-2012 vaccine will protect against an influenza A H3N2 virus, an influenza B virus and the H1N1 virus that emerged in 2009 to cause a pandemic.
• Everyone 6 months of age and older should get a flu vaccine as soon as the 2011-2012 vaccines are available.
• Vaccination of high risk persons is especially important to decrease their risk of severe flu illness.
• People at high risk of serious flu complications include young children, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease and people 65 years and older.
• Vaccination also is important for health care workers, and other people who live with or care for high risk people to keep from spreading flu to high risk people.
• Children younger than 6 months are at high risk of serious flu illness, but are too young to be vaccinated. People who care for them should be vaccinated instead.

Take everyday preventive actions to stop the spread of germs. 

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.  Purell, B4Brands, DermaCen
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you are sick with flu–like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.)
• While sick, limit contact with others as much as possible to keep from infecting them.

Take flu antiviral drugs if your doctor prescribes them. 

• If you get the flu, antiviral drugs can treat your illness.
• Antiviral drugs are different from antibiotics. They are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) and are not available over-the-counter.
• Antiviral drugs can make illness milder and shorten the time you are sick. They may also prevent serious flu complications.
• It’s very important that antiviral drugs be used early (within the first 2 days of symptoms) to treat people who are very sick (such as those who are hospitalized) or people who are sick with flu symptoms and who are at increased risk of severe flu illness, such as pregnant women, young children, people 65 and older and people with certain chronic health conditions.
• Flu-like symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people also may have vomiting and diarrhea. People may be infected with the flu, and have respiratory symptoms without a fever.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

What is the real story behind the H1N1 outbreak?

An influenza pandemic occurs roughly three times a century. The most severe recently documented influenza pandemic was 1918. About one percent of those who became ill died. Since 1997, CDC and others had been tracking a novel influenza, H5N1, sometimes called bird flu. The world was overdue for an influenza pandemic. H5N1 was and continues to be very deadly, with about 60% of people who develop the illness die. When H1N1 was first recognized in Mexico in 2009, no one could predict whether it was going to be a severe pandemic. Early indications were that healthy young adults died, like in 1918.

The United States had a choice: gamble H1N1 would not kill in high numbers, or work as fast as possible to develop a vaccine and make it available to as many Americans as possible. In fact, there was no choice—the vaccine had to be made and distributed. Doing so, along with other protective steps, prevented millions of cases of H1N1 influenza and thousands of hospitalizations and deaths. H1N1 did kill, including infants, young adults and pregnant women. The virus continues to circulate as does the more deadly but less contagious H5N1. CDC is constantly on alert for new, deadly influenza viruses and other airborne diseases.

CDC Foundation

CONTAGION, film by Warner Brothers.

Can what happened in this film really happen?

Serious, deadly contagious disease outbreaks can and do happen. CDC investigates new contagious diseases—averaging one new contagion per year. These new contagious diseases can emerge right here or only a plane-ride away from here.

It’s not just new diseases that threaten the United States. Some diseases long thought controlled in the United States, like tuberculosis, can reemerge and be more deadly than ever.

CDC is on 24/7 to answer the call when a community or a country needs help to save lives and protect people from health threats. How many people get sick and die immediately depends on the following:

•    the rapid detection of the disease organism,
•    a clear understanding of how it is transmitted person-to-person, and
•    what is needed to stop ongoing transmission. 

At that point it is a race to find the best way to treat and prevent the disease.

CDC is on the frontline 24/7 providing national health security and its success depends on many factors:

•    How many trained scientists it has available to respond
•    The quality of its laboratories
•    The available means to collect and transmit its findings
•    The degree to which people take action to protect themselves and stay healthy

Are we prepared?

CDC is always preparing for, and working to prevent, the next pandemic. At the center of the nation's public health system, CDC exists to protect communities and save lives by controlling disease outbreaks like the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

The CDC’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) serves as the command center for monitoring and coordinating emergency response to public health threats in the U.S. and abroad. Staffed around-the-clock, the EOC serves as CDC's central point of contact for reporting public health threats such as pandemic flu, natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

CDC Foundation

Mind These Common Courtesy Tips During Cold and Allergy Season

If you remain home alone while sick or suffering from allergies, you’ll reduce the risk of spreading germs to others through your coughs and sneezes. But that’s not always practical. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has outlined a few tips for containing germs while you nurse the sniffles:

• Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze.
• Put your used tissue in the waste basket.
• Don’t have a tissue? Cough or sneeze into your upper sleeve or elbow, not your hands.
• You may be asked to put on a facemask to protect others.
• Wash your hands often with soap and warm water for 20 seconds.
• If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub. 

1 "Cover Your Cough: Stop the spread of germs that can make you and others sick," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov

Providing PURELL to Employees Led to 20% Fewer Sick Days

When you can't be at work because you are sick you miss a lot. And when you show up too under the weather to get much done, you not only are less than optimally productive, but you spread germs to all of your co-workers as well.

When FedEx Custom Critical added PURELL Instant Hand Sanitizer to its work environment, the company saw a 20 percent reduction in absenteeism¹. That’s because PURELL gave employees a better chance at fighting off the germs of co-workers. People could accomplish more at work and, later, at home.

PURELL helped reduce sick days and increased productivity at FedEx—just as it can do for you and your work life.

1 FedEx Outcome Study Executive Update: Interim Report, July 27, 2004, (unpublished) GOJO industries, Inc., 90.3% confidence interval.