The Health Department says it is worried that parents are underestimating how serious influenza can be on children.
The department has revealed that less than 20 per cent of Western Australian children have been vaccinated for this year's flu season.
It has also released new research revealing how quickly influenza took its toll on 15 children who were admitted to intensive care last year.
Of those, 4 children died from complications associated with the flu.
Dr Paul Van Buynder says children should be receiving the first of two flu vaccinations now.
"Somewhere between 2 and 5 per cent of all children are admitted to hospital because of influenza related complications," he said.
"We think it's very important that parents understand that this a very serious illness for children."
SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
...such as whether the children admitted to intensive care already had a flu shot. The information I want is how many of those children had previously been given the flu shot -- the article insinuates that none of them had it, though they don't actually come out and say that.
On another related note, when are these doctors ever going to be satisfied? Vaccines are being developed against new "threats" every year, so by their logic, there should never be any limit to the amount of vaccines that a child or adult is administered. The amount of garbage that is injected into the average child in the Western world these days is so much greater than 20 years ago, and yet it seems that the children of today are far LESS healthy than any previous generation! It stuns me how slow doctors are to make the connection.