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Photo Kaimi Rose Lum
Pediatrician Parker Small wants the town to provide FluMist vaccinations to children at Truro Central School. |
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Town urged to fund flu vaccinations
By Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
TRURO — Characterizing schools as “nothing but virus exchange systems,” pediatrician and part-time Truro resident Parker Small Jr. asked the selectmen on Tuesday if they would cover the costs of immunizing the town’s schoolchildren against the flu this fall.
Small specifically recommended that the town purchase a vaccine known as FluMist, which is sprayed into the nose rather than injected by needle into the arm, and which Small said is a more effective — and painless — vaccine against the flu. FluMist activates “all three arms of the immune system,” he said, and can decrease the severity and duration of the illness.
In an interview prior to Tuesday’s meeting, Small said administering the vaccine at Truro Central School could stem a local flu outbreak.
“There are computer modeling studies that suggest if you are able to immunize 70 percent of the kids in the community, you will actually prevent a local epidemic,” he said.
The catch is that FluMist, at $24 per dose, costs twice as much as the standard flu shot. Small has been successful, however, in an effort to secure the FluMist vaccine for 20,000 school-aged children in Gainesville, Fla., where he spends the winter months as professor emeritus of the University of Florida College of Medicine.
The company that makes FluMist has agreed to donate close to half a million dollars’ worth of the vaccine to the Alachua County Health Dept., which serves the city of Gainesville, because in return Small and his university colleagues will be doing a scientific study on the immunizations’ effects, Small said.
Unfortunately, the town of Truro lacks the infrastructure that a larger city like Gainesville has, Small said, so he wasn’t expecting the company to make a similar donation to the Truro community.
The selectmen refrained from saying yes or no to Small’s proposal, instead requesting that Small deliver the same presentation to the school board. After that, board chair Fred Gaechter said, the selectmen could meet jointly with the school board “and determine how to proceed.”
Questions about parental permission, side effects from the vaccination and so on need to be resolved, Gaechter said. With that need for more information and the flu vaccination season fast approaching (in October and November), the selectmen agreed that Small’s proposal probably wouldn’t be able to be approved in time for the upcoming school year.
“We’re just not going to make it this year,” Gaechter said.
klum@provincetownbanner.com
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