Pregnant women and flu protection
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
When women are pregnant, their immune system changes and their risk of flu complications rises. That's true with seasonal flu, and pregnant women are at even greater risk of severe illness with H1N1 flu. That's why pregnant women were one of the five groups given priority for initial doses of H1N1 flu vaccine.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Sonja Rasmussen says pregnant women should get flu shots against both seasonal and H1N1 flu. She says they can get the shots at any time during pregnancy. And she says:
[Dr. Sonja Rasmussen speaks] ``In addition to the protection provided for pregnant women, influenza vaccine given during pregnancy has been shown to prevent influenza in infants less than 6 months of age, who are unable to get the influenza vaccination themselves.''
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.