The Alberta government says they will be going ahead with a plan to purchase more flu vaccines to make sure they province doesn’t suffer a serious shortage of the medicine like it did this past season.
Budget 2014 has set aside $12.5M to purchase over 2M doses of the vaccine, about 700,000 more than last year.
Officials say they hope to increase the immunization rate from 27 percent to 45 percent this coming season.
Fred Horne, the Minister of Health, says that vaccines are the best protection against the flu.
“The more Albertans who are immunized, the fewer serious illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths result from influenza. We are planning ahead and are committed to immunizing even more Albertans during the next flu season,” he said in a release.
Health officials say that if the province hits the 45 percent immunization mark, about 60 deaths will have been prevented along with about 90 percent of doctors’ visits.
Another $2M is also being budgeted to increase support for all immunization programs.
This year, more than 1.1M Albertans were immunized, with 27 percent of Albertans immunized as of March 1, 2014.
