UNMH donates flu shots

UNM’s Student Health & Counseling services have begun a campaign encouraging students to get the flu shot before flu season hits.

SHAC started its influenza campaign by offering two free flu shot clinics last week where more than 950 students and staff members were vaccinated.

SHAC Director Beverly Kloeppel said they provide the shots to try and prevent large flu outbreaks on campus.

“It’s prevention of illness in the University community,” she said, “That’s why we try to get faculty, staff and students in the community immunized, so there’s fewer hospitalized with influenza, which can be very expensive.”

Kloeppel said the flu season can start as early as October and continue through late May, peaking in January or February, and the severity varies from year to year. She said she recommends students get vaccinated as early as possible.

This year’s clinics are dedicated to Raymond Plotkin, a UNM student who passed away from the H1N1 virus as a freshman in 2009.

The free shots are donated by UNM’s Health Sciences Center, and the clinicians who administer them are UNM and CNM nursing students who need to learn how to administer injections.

“The clinic allows them to perform over and over again to get really good at giving injections as well as get the injections in they need for their program,” Kloeppel said.

Kloeppel said the immunization is not just for those with a high risk contracting the flu.

“I think the philosophy has changed over time because they used to just immunize people who were at risk,” she said. “But now it’s apparent that if you immunize the whole population, you get less exposure to those groups.”

The next free flu clinics will be held Oct. 25 and 26 in the SUB Atrium from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.