Flu Season has local residents seeking medical care

Loris, SC—February 28, 2008—A number of local residents are finding themselves visiting emergency rooms and physician offices to seek relief from flu symptoms. 

Symptoms of the flu include:  The common symptoms of the flu include:  fever (usually high), headache, muscle aches, chills, dry cough, and extreme tiredness.  Stomach symptoms, such as vomiting and diarrhea are more common in children, but can occur in adults

Each year in the U.S. about 200,000 people are hospitalized and 36,000 die from flu and related complications. 

Your risk from flu will be reduced by doing the following:

• Get the flu vaccine.   The flu vaccine vastly improves your protection against hospitalization and death. 
• See your medical provider within the first 48 hours of symptoms.  Flu is a respiratory ailment.  What is commonly called the stomach flu is not actually flu, but another illness.
• Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly (with soap and hot water, preferably) for at least 20 seconds
• Stay home when sick, if possible, and limit your contact with sick people.  Please do not visit other hospitalized family or friends. 

The flu vaccine must be formulated each year because influenza viruses, unlike many other diseases, mutates and changes as it migrates from around the world. In the past twenty-four years, most of the matches determined by our national public health system have been very effective.  The public must keep in mind that each vaccine provided some increased immunity and served to prevent many deaths.

Remember, if you have not had your flu vaccine, it is not too late—so why wait?