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Making Sure to Get Your Flu Shot

Many health officials are predicting an unusually severe flu season this year and calling for everyone over 55 to get vaccinated.

Many health officials are predicting an unusually severe flu season this year and calling for everyone over 55 to get vaccinated. Typically, the call goes out each year to those over 65 and those with lung diseases or other chronic illness. Justine Strand is director of the physician assistant program at Duke University Medical Center. She says even in a mild flu season, those who are not in the best of health can find themselves in trouble if they get the bug.

"Asthma or lung disease, other chronic problems in the face of flu can be a devastating illness and in fact life-threatening. The flu vaccine is very safe and we believe it saves lives."

Strand says there are not many people still around who remember the flu epidemic of 1918, when over 600,000 Americans died from influenza. But she says one reason it hasn't happened again is because of the actions of health officials in making the vaccine available, and in convincing everyone possible to receive the vaccination. I'm Tom Britt.

Strand says an influenza outbreak like that in 1918 is unlikely to recur, but is not beyond the realm of possibility.

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"Those kind of events could in fact occur nowadays, with just the wrong kind of flu bug and just the right kind of conditions including world travel, the flu can be here and devastating rather quickly. Happily we haven't seen an event like that, but it still could happen."