DETROIT — While recent news of H1N1 suggests the virus may have reached its peak, Center for Disease Control officials say reaching out to communities to clarify serious misunderstandings remains crucial.
At a Detroit ethnic media roundtable discussion on the issue last week, Dr. Corey Herbert, medical director at the Louisiana Recovery School District and assistant professor of pediatrics at Tulane University, explained that trusting health officials and experts is the key to dispelling the H1N1 hype.
“People are not listening to the government anymore,” he said. “Why? Because ‘the government let me down.'”
“I got into a cab last night and my driver told me he no longer trusted the government,” Herbert said. His driver was a longtime GM employee, recently laid off in the wake of the recession and was feeling taken advantage of. Herbert added that he introduced the subject of the swine flu vaccine, but his driver immediately dismissed it, and cited the Tuskegee experiment, in which researchers withheld treatment from African-American men with syphilis.
“We can’t forget the Tuskegee experiment,” Herbert said. “All of this is real, we have to embrace that this did happen, but we have also come a long way,” he added.
“There will be people who will die because of their own ignorance, but we can dispel myths,” he said. “People are getting all their information from media, and as media people, we can make this bad or we can make this good.”
But it isn’t just the media that has the power to influence, he asserted.
Community and spiritual leaders also have a responsibility to be educated and advise their communities, he said, because they are most trusted. Herbert had recently spoken with the pastor of one of New Orleans’s largest churches about H1N1, who was subsequently vaccinated in front of his congregation and encouraged them to do so, as well.
“They trust him, they don’t trust me,” Herbert said.
According to the Michigan Department of Community Health, there have been 658,466 “flu-like” illnesses reported since January 1, 2009, with the majority H1N1. As of April 2009, there have been 73 “flu-like” illness deaths, with the majority also H1N1. Since September 2009, the state of Michigan has ordered and received 2,296,200 H1N1 vaccine doses. Nationwide, H1N1 is responsible for nearly 4,000 deaths and approximately 22 million infections since April 2009.
In Dearborn, the Health Department did not receive any vaccines from the batches being voluntarily recalled by the manufacturer due to concerns over the potency of certain batches.
The Dearborn Health Department continues to offer the H1N1 vaccine for any Dearborn resident, regardless of age or health requirements. The vaccine is free.
The Health Department is inside the Henry Ford Centennial Library, 16301 Michigan Ave., and is open 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. Mondays and Fridays and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It is closed on Thursdays. Call 313.943.2090.
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