The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s immunization advisory committee Wednesday recommended that all children under 5 and over 6 months be vaccinated against influenza. The committee voted unanimously to support changing current vaccination guidelines, which call for annual flu shots for children 6 to 24 months old.

Influenza killed 153 children in the 2003-2004 flu season—more U.S. children than chicken pox, whooping cough, and measles combined—according to the CDC. Nearly two-thirds of those who died were under age 5, and half were previously healthy. Forty-three percent had asthma.

The CDC panel also recommended new strategies to increase flu vaccine rates among health care personnel. Currently, only 40 percent of health care workers get a flu shot.

The new recommendations include strategies to make vaccine more accessible to health care workers and to help better determine the reasons health care personnel have for not getting vaccinated.

The panel recommends that health care facilities: offer influenza vaccine annually to all eligible personnel, including students; administer vaccine at the workplace, during all shifts, and at no cost to employees; use proven strategies to improve vaccination coverage, including education to combat fears and misconceptions about influenza and influenza vaccines; and keep records of staff members that decline vaccination for nonmedical reasons and use the data to develop facility-specific strategies to improve vaccination rates.

Physicians should also be aware that effective July 1, it will be against California law to administer mercury-containing vaccines—including inactivated influenza vaccine from multidose vials—to pregnant women and children younger than 3 years old. Next flu season, only doses of influenza vaccine from single-dose syringes or vials with trace levels or no mercury may be given to these groups.

Contact: Robin Flagg, 415/882-5110 or rflagg@cmanet.org.