VANCOUVER, Oct. 30, 2019 — As British Columbia heads into the 2019/20 flu season, the province's community pharmacists are quickly becoming stocked and ready to fight back against the flu by providing influenza vaccines on the front-lines.
The public is encouraged to visit their local pharmacies to get vaccinated against the flu virus.
To promote vaccination efforts, the BC Pharmacy Association has invited Members of the Legislative Assembly across the province to also get vaccinated. This is the third year all MLAs have been invited to visit community pharmacies for their flu vaccine.
In the last flu season, nearly a third of all MLAs reported that they chose a community pharmacy as the place to receive their flu shots.
Pharmacists have been authorized to provide flu vaccines since 2009, following the H1N1 outbreak. Community pharmacists are B.C.'s most accessible health-care professionals, present in 153 of 160 communities across the province.
Last year, pharmacists in B.C. administered 707,573 flu shots, representing 47 per cent of all publicly funded flu shots administered across all health professions in B.C.
For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact:
Michael Mui
Communications Specialist
(604) 269-2878
michael.mui@bcpharmacy.ca