By TEDDYE SNELL

Press Staff Writer

Over the past few years, employees at the Cherokee County Health Department spent the latter part of October and the month of November in a full-on sprint, getting patients vaccinated for the seasonal flu.

This year is a little different, due to the spread of swine flu, or the H1N1 virus. The vaccination plan for swine flu more closely resembles a marathon.

According to Linda Axley, CCHD administrator, the vaccine has been measured in its distribution, with high-risk groups being targeted first.

“In the last three weeks, Oklahoma began receiving its first shipments of H1N1 vaccination,” said Axley. “States are told they’re receiving X number of vaccinations, and at the last minute, it ends up being much less.”

For instance, CCHD was told it would receive 20,000 vaccines for week three of the distribution plan, but got only 2,000. That’s not to say there will be a long-term shortage, only that it will take time to get everyone vaccinated.

The first week of distribution, CCHD targeted school-age children in its coverage area, which includes Cherokee, Mayes and Adair counties.

“We worked closely with the schools, monitoring absentee rates,” said Axley. “Since none of the schools at the time were running absentee rates at 15 percent above normal, we distributed vaccination to residential educational facilities who had higher rates.”

CCHD included Sequoyah Schools, the United Methodist Children’s Home, Cookson Hills Christian School, Talking Leaves Job Corps, the Tenkiller Adventure program and Thunderbird Youth Academy in its first vaccination effort.

“For the second week of distribution, we had enough information from the public schools regarding higher absentee rates,” said Axley. “So we distributed vaccine to deal with the significant amount of illness in the public schools around Oct. 12.”

Last week, the health department finally had the opportunity to distribute vaccine to health care providers.

“Health care providers had to pre-register to administer the vaccine,” said Axley. “Part of their agreement with the federal government is they cannot charge for the vaccine itself, but can charge an administrative fee comparable to what a patient would pay with Medicare or Medicaid.”

Axley said the federal government is also providing supplies necessary to see that everyone is protected – including syringes, gloves, bandages and containers.

“As you can imagine, we really appreciate that,” said Axley.

Even though health care providers have received vaccine, the target group is limited. Karen Sherwood, CCHD Community Health Programs coordinator, said this has created confusion among seniors who are seeking vaccination.

“We’ve trained our seniors so well about the seasonal flu vaccine that they’ve been a little confused about not getting vaccinated yet for H1N1,” said Sherwood. “We still don’t have vaccine for people ages 25-64, but we will eventually, possibly in November and December.”

Axley said CCHD is planning clinics for later this week.

“This will be the first week we’ll have vaccine to keep here in the health department,” said Axley. “This will allow us to make a limited number of appointments for the targeted group in our offices. The rationale is that while many people assume pregnant women and children have health care providers, often they do not.”

Axley doesn’t have a specific date yet, but said hopefully the state will soon be shipping vaccine directly to health care providers, rather than making individual health departments the sole distribution point.

“As I said, we don’t anticipate a shortage,” said Axley. “It’s just going to take a while to get everyone vaccinated.”

To help speed the process, Axley said CCHD is the recipient of a public health response grant.

“This has allowed us to hire temporary, part-time staff for the sole purpose of responding to H1N1,” said Axley. “In the past week, we’ve hired three nurses and three clerks, one per county, to help with the vaccinations. It’s great to have additional staff to work all aspects of the H1N1 response.”

Unlike seasonal flu, H1N1 vaccinations have to be logged and reported within one week of their administration, so the federal government can monitor and track the disease.

“Some health departments have even been reassigning staff to help with both H1N1 and seasonal flu responses,” said Axley. “As a result, some health departments may be scaling back other regular services.”

To add insult to injury, Axley said they’re currently out of seasonal flu vaccine.

“We have the mist available for both the seasonal flu and H1N1, which can be given to anyone who’s healthy, and ages 2-49,” said Axley. “Normally, we’d just now be gearing up to administer seasonal flu vaccine, but it’s been a very different flu season. This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

Clinic dates

The Cherokee County Health Department is offering H1N1 vaccinations during two clinics this week, to qualifying patients. The clinics are by appointment only, and will be from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 28, and Friday, Oct. 30.

To qualify, a patient must fall into one or more of the following categories:

• Children 6 months to 18 years of age.

• Pregnant women.

• Front-line health care workers who have direct contact with patients or infectious materials.

• Custodial parents of children under 6 months of age.

To make an appointment, call the Cherokee County Health Department at (918) 456-8826.