The Northern Health FluVax campaign concluded on Sunday after two months of a proactive campaign to ensure maximum protection for our staff and our community.

Last year influenza had a profound impact with increased hospital presentations, GP attendances and absenteeism across the Victorian community.

As a key part of our Winter Strategy Northern Health made the decision to do things differently by proactively promoting and providing influenza vaccinations.  Our strategy was to protect staff, patients and our community, aligning with Northern Health’s priority of ‘staying well’ and Victoria’s Health 2040 strategy of better health and access.

We believed that by providing free immunisation to the family and friends of our patients and staff, greater herd immunity would provide improved wellbeing in our community and in particular, keep our vulnerable patients protected from influenza infection. We ordered additional vaccine in early February that was able to sustain us right through to the end of the campaign period.

90% of our staff received the vaccine along with 11,000 community members and over 1,000 admitted patients. This is a magnificent result.

Congratulations to Jodi Ashworth and Ros Payne for leading this initiative – and all staff involved.

I hope you all have a great week ahead.

Siva Sivarajah
Chief Executive