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If you live in the USA, just enter your zip code to find the location of a clinic near you. You can also search by date and a range. Good idea.

The link is: Find a flu shot . com

Trust that helps.

Flu season is approaching soon and now is the time to think protection!

There are a number of steps you can take to protect yourself. Here are a few:

1) Get a flu shot: in general, anyone who wants to reduce their chances of getting the flu can get vaccinated.

However, certain people should get vaccinated each year. They are either people who are at high risk of having serious flu complications or people who live with or care for those at high risk for serious complications.

For the 2006 flu season, the CDC recommendations have added on children ages 24 to 59 months, which also extends to household contacts of the children, and their caregivers outside the home.

The CDC also suggests you take the following steps to help ward off the flu:

2) Avoid close contact with people who are infected.

3) Wash your hands often to help protect you from germs. Studies suggest that flu viruses can live on surfaces for two to eight hours.

4) Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs are often spread when a person touches something that is contaminated with germs and then touches his or her eyes, nose, or mouth.

5) Ask your doctor about antiviral drugs, which are not a substitute for the flu shot, but they do add another level of protection.

6) If possible, stay home from work, school and errands when you are sick, so you’ll be less likely to pass on the virus.

7) Ask your doctor about Pneumonia shots: NOTE - You need a flu shot every year while your pneumonia shot is generally good for a lifetime.

I just came across Avian Alert, a Canadian company who state their mission as “to notify you of Avian Flu outbreaks in the shortest amount of time possible.

What they do is they deliver real time alerts on global pandemics via email or SMS. Suppose for example you were traveling to Singapore and want to keep track of what is going on in your area. Just add a few details to Avian Alert and you can be assured you will know in record time via your cell phone what is happening.

I suppose a possible problem is that if you are traveling to Singapore, Avian Alert can’t tell you if Bird Flu beat your plane to Singapore, but nothing is perfect. It is still an interesting concept which I am sure will be approved upon.

Check them out at avianalert.com

The US government bird flu “implementation plan” would close schools, ask employees to stay home and cost around 7 million US$. Already hospitals are complaining that costs to be bird flu prepared are too much. The implementation plan lays out 300 specific tasks for each US federal government agency. The plan assumes the worst - that 40 percent of the work force will be absent at the pandemic peak. The plan states that in a worse-case scenario 1.9 million Americans die from the virus and as many as 30 percent become infected.

Details are given about quarantines and border closures although stressing that defence against bird flu is difficult. But the principle goal of the US “implementation plan” is, “the capacity for every American to have a vaccine in the case of a pandemic, no matter what the virus is”, according to the Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. The plan also stresses more methods to develop vaccines. The government already has ordered $162.5 million worth of vaccine against Asian bird flu.

Specifically, the US implementation plan costs $ 7.1 billion including:

* $1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans; the administration wants to have sufficient vaccine for front-line emergency personnel and at-risk populations, including military personnel.

* $1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of the flu symptoms.

* $2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a process that now takes months. The goal is to have the manufacturing capability by 2010 to brew enough vaccine for every American within six months’ of a pandemic’s start.

* $583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to respond to an outbreak.

President George W. Bush announced the initial plan in November, 2005. Congress approved about half that amount but is likely to approve the rest soon. “At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world, but if history is our guide there’s reason to be concerned,” Bush said. “In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them.”

“The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world,” continued Bush. “If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine online quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain,” Bush said.

The H5N1 avian bird flu virus has infect 205 people and killed 113 of them in nine countries, according to the World Health Organization.

With a few mutations it could become easily transmitted from person to person and spark a pandemic. And experts say H5N1 looks closer to doing this than any other new flu virus seen in the past 30 years.

Sources :: Health and Human Services (HHS) ; Reuters

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