Counting the costs of flu


This is according to 2015 research by the Global Hygiene Council (GHC).
The study of more than 9 000 people across 17 countries, including South Africa, also found that the average person misses 4.5 days of school or work due to an infection and 91% of people reported taking at least some time off work or school due to an infection in 2014.
“The socio-economic implications of cold and flu, such as health complications, lost productivity, school absenteeism, and cost of healthcare can be limited by avoiding the spread of flu and cold,” said GHC member Dr Kgosi Letlape.
Letlape said colds and flu are respiratory infections transmitted by a virus. Although infections happen throughout the year, more people tend to be infected with cold and flu throughout the autumn and winter. According to Letlape, contrary to popular belief, colds and flu are not caused by the weather. The biggest reason the illnesses are more prevalent in winter is because people tend to stick very close to each other because it’s so cold, which means the chance of passing on illness-causing germs is a lot higher.
The influenza season is usually between the last week of April and the first week of July, but according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) this can change year to year.
Nhlanhla Shongwe, a mother of two from Vosloorus, told Health-e News that during winter she spends more than R300 on flu medicine for her children.
“I don’t take them to the clinic because our clinics are always short of medicines,” said Shongwe, who added that she grew up believing that flu was caused by cold weather.
Steve Mabona, spokesperson for the Gauteng Department of Health, said for the 2015/16 year the department procured 1150 units of flu vaccine to the value of R64331.
“The burden of flu is usually high during winter, however, public health facilities have enough stock and never run out of vaccines,” said Mabona.
He added that the department procured flu vaccines annually at the beginning of each flu season, which are then given to specific target groups namely – pregnant women, people with chronic medical conditions, including people living with HIV and Aids, and pensioners.
Author
-
Thabo Molelekwa joined OurHealth citizen journalists project in 2013 and went on to become an intern reporter in 2015. Before joining Health-e News, Thabo was a member of the Treatment Action Campaign’s Vosloorus branch. He graduated from the Tshwane University of Technology with a diploma in Computer Systems and started his career at Discovery Health as a claims assessor. In 2016 he was named an International HIV Prevention Reporting Fellow with the International Centre for Journalists and was a finalist in the Discovery Health Journalism Awards competition in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Thabo also completed a feature writing course at the University of Cape Town in 2016. In 2017 he became a News reporter , he is currently managing the Citizen Journalism programme.You can follow him on @molelekwa98
View all posts
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Counting the costs of flu
by Thabo Molelekwa, Health-e News
July 1, 2016
MOST READ
Tembisa hospital open to the public, cause of fire under investigation
Gauteng Health’s cost-cutting measures could leave patients waiting over 4 months for care
Tembisa Hospital closed to new patients following emergency unit fire
Eastern Cape Health struggles to repair weather-damaged facilities
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related

Gauteng health facilities face shortages of crucial medication

SA’s shady food industry tactics puts ‘profit before people’

South Africans support Health Promotion Levy after successful mass media campaign

Gauteng health facilities face shortages of crucial medication

SA’s shady food industry tactics puts ‘profit before people’
