A study said that vaccination for flu can cut the chances of your child to get admitted to the hospital.
Canadian researchers investigated 10,000 children, aged 6 months to 5 years, during the flu season between the years, 2010 to 2014, who lived in the province of Ontario.
The study found that those, who had been vaccinated against flu and aged 2 to 4 years, had 67% reduced risk to get admitted in the hospital and those, who were 6 months to 23 months had 48% reduced risk to get hospitalized. Moreover, those, who were vaccinated only with a single dose during their first season of flu, had 39% reduced risk of getting hospitalized.
“Influenza can cause serious illness, especially in young children, but there hasn’t been a lot of research that has examined the magnitude of the influenza vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing kids from getting really sick and being hospitalized,” said study’s senior author, Jeff Kwong, a scientist at Public Health Ontario.
“This research paper helps fill that gap by showing how effective the influenza vaccine can be at protecting young kids against serious complications from influenza infections,” said Kwong in an agency’s news release.
The lead author, Sarah Buchan, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto said that children should be given the vaccination annually to prevent serious flu.