Minding Your Business; 302; New Mexico Health Department

You Minding your business is made possible with a grant from Orion Propulsion, working with the technology of tomorrow's aerospace industry today. Additional funding comes from the Las Cruces Home Builders Association supporting our community through the efforts of this public television program

and Seal Levittino, Realtor of Emerick Real Estate, who is proud to be associated with the quality programs and community service projects of PBS and KRWG TV. KRWG TV presents Minding Your Business, a look at the people, places, events and issues that impact the business and economy of Southwest New Mexico, with your host Charles Comer. Hello and welcome to Minding Your Business, a show where we explore business, politics and issues that impact our area. This week on Minding Your Business, we speak with two representatives of the Department of Health, about several health issues that are currently impacting our area. Joining us today is Dr. Eugene Marciniac. Dr. Marciniac is the regional health officer for the New Mexico Department of Health. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having us. And right next to him is Amanda Lopez. You're also with the Department of Health, but you're the school mental health advocate. And we'll talk a little later in the show about exactly what that means. So thank you so much for coming out today as well. Now today we're here to talk about several issues. We're going to talk about pertussis. We're going to talk about suicide rates, but let's start out with a very successful flu season for the Department of Health. Tell me, why is the Department of Health calling this a successful flu season? Well, it's really a successful flu vaccination schedule because this is the first year and three years where we've actually had really good supplies of the influenza vaccine available for all our high risk groups and for pretty much everybody who wants to get vaccinated. Two years ago, there was one of the manufacturers of the flu vaccine had contamination issues and so the supplies were very limited around the country.

Last year there were distribution problems and so they had fairly good supplies, but we really didn't get the vaccine in in a timely manner. This year we have the flu vaccines available. We've been vaccinating and there really is adequate supplies for all the high risk groups and for other people that are not in high risk groups that would want to get the flu vaccine this year. Now let's talk about not this season, but two seasons before that. Big trouble. Big trouble with the flu. Let's talk about why it was a vaccine, right? Yeah, the problem with the flu vaccine manufacturers is there's only a couple of companies that actually manufacture flu vaccine. So when one company has problems with the process because of our Centers for Disease Control decided to not use their vaccine, it just created big supply issues two years ago. And they said this year the problems as far as the amount of vaccine and the availability of the vaccine has just been really good and the distribution problems are not there this year. So it's really been a successful flu vaccination year for the New Mexico Department of Health.

Now last year there was almost a panic. Again, another problem with the vaccine. Tell us exactly what happened with all of that. Well, it was really just mainly the problems with getting the flu, the supply of the vaccine out to all the different places around the country. And so although different places would get it, private groups like Walmart and some other stores and pharmacies would get it and then the Department of Health and other private physicians and clinics were just delayed in getting the flu vaccine. You know, we were delayed in getting our supplies and they should say now we were we were talking earlier. Why do you believe employers should encourage their employees to get flu vaccine? Well, I thought I just said, you know, the Department of Health always we always try to get the high risk groups vaccinated first. And you know, people that need to get the vaccine first, we usually like to get them the vaccine in October and November of every year because it takes a couple of weeks to build up immunity.

And just a few of these high risk groups are, you know, elderly people, but that includes anyone over the age of 50 this year, which is quite a big group. Anyone with chronic diseases, children and adults up to age, you know, under age 15 under 65 with any chronic disease such as diabetes or asthma, people with HIV infection and other immune compromised states. And so those are those are some of the main groups in the household context of those, those people. So we always try to get the, you know, the high risk groups vaccinated first. However, the, you know, the Department of Health does recommend that anyone who wants to get the flu shot and does not, you know, and does not want to come down with influenza this year or any year, you know, can get vaccinated. And from a business standpoint, you know, the particularly if there's a bad flu year, the absentee rates are very high and the flu vaccine has been shown to be cost effective way to keep people to lower these absentee rates and to keep people at work during a bad flu season.

Now, let's, let's create a scenario. I have the flu and I'm, I know, no, of course this isn't the case with my employer. An MSU encourages people who are ill to take sick leave. But, but just a, just just an example. I have the flu. I'm feeling pressure to go into work. Should, should I go in anyway? Yeah, take, take a bunch of cold medicine and go in anyway. Well, that's, you know, we, we recommend that people, you know, to keep from spreading the flu because you can actually spread the flu even with a mild case. So if, you know, if you're well enough to go into work and you're just having, you know, mild fever and mild aches and pains, but you have influenza, you're still just as contagious as if you had a more severe case. So we always recommend that if you're sick, your employer, your employer probably doesn't want you there. And, you know, we would recommend that you at least stay home until the symptoms are, are getting better.

What do you tell people who are healthy and they're working in a place with some people who have the flu? There, there's some measures they can, they can take to, to help lower their risk, right? Well, the, the main things is just good. We call it good respiratory etiquette. If someone is coughing at work that you cough into a Kleenex, you don't cough on people, they even say to cough onto your elbow. If you have to sneeze in a hurry, rather than just cough, cough into your hands. If you do cough into your hands or sneeze into your hands, you should wash your hands. You know, frequent hand washing can help prevent some of the, you know, some of the cases from being caught from people because the flu does get on the hands and then you, in fact, get infected from your hands too. Alcohol hand sanitizers are an option also that, you know, can, can help cut down on the germs in your hands to help prevent both flu and colds. Now, if you see someone sneeze on their hand and they're using your, your keyboard, is, is it, is it safe to, safe to touch? They have the flu.

Is, is it safe to touch? You know, is, is it one of those things that, that dies right away in the air or, or, or on contact with something else? Tell us a little bit about, about the virus itself. Well, you know, the flu and the other viruses can live on, you know, surfaces such as keyboards for, you know, for a while. So it's, oh, you know, a few, you know, a few hours, I believe. And getting, you know, sanitizing those with, with the, oh, sort of the chlorine-based sanitizers can be helpful, not just for flu, but for a variety of other bacterial and viruses, cold viruses in particular can live also on for, you know, several hours. Or more. So sanitizing the surfaces, you know, there are contaminated phones, phone handles, computer mouse, you know, your computer mouse, your computer keyboard, all should be sort of sanitized on a regular basis for that reason. No, but we're not talking about people regularly, walking, walking around with, with, with their mouse covered with, with a surgical mask or, or wearing latex gloves, just because they're afraid to touch the door handle it at, say, you know, the Walmart bathroom or something like that, right?

You know, people, people shouldn't be that, that's scared about getting the flu, shouldn't they? No, but it's just common sense measures, you know, using, you know, using your tissue paper, washing your hands frequently, particularly if you're sick, so you don't get the virus on your hands and spread it around to surfaces and things. No, I'm, I'm sorry, did I interrupt you? No, that's fine. I didn't, I did forget to mention about healthcare workers as a major risk group, because we're talking about spreading, you know, spreading of the influenza virus. And I'll help, you know, there's really a big push on to get all healthcare workers vaccinated in the past, they've had very low rates of vaccination. I mean, the rates tend to be on a national basis, about 40% of people that provide, you know, doctors, nurses, medical assistants, lab techs, on a national basis, about 40% of them get a flu shot on average. And it really should be up well above 90% because, because healthcare workers are one of the main groups that can actually spread the flu around, because you can actually spread the flu a day before you get, day or two before you get symptoms and even, you know, five days or more after the symptoms start.

So, you know, for healthcare workers, they may not be in a high risk group to be vaccinated as far as their chronic medical conditions, but they're really one of the most important groups that need to be vaccinated because they're the ones that spread the flu to their patients. And they have a lot of patients that are on high risk groups with chronic diseases, elderly people and little kids and other high risk groups. Now, yeah, I've got a healthcare professional right here in front of me a couple of them, actually, you being an MD, 40% what is going on there? What's going on in these people's minds? Do they think they're bulletproof? Well, it's part of that and it's actually kind of the same reasons why the general public doesn't get vaccinated is the same reasons why healthcare workers give. They're afraid they're going to get the, you know, that they're going to get the flu or get the side effects of the flu vaccine. They're going to get, they never get the flu, so I don't need to be vaccinated. I never get sick. I haven't had the flu in five years. It's pretty much the same reasons why you hear the general public, you know, and those are the main things.

The main, probably the main top two reasons are I get the flu, I get the flu every time I get the flu vaccine and I never get the flu. And so it's sort of the bulletproof defense. Okay, let's, let's talk for a minute about myths and mysteries. The, the, you, you had alluded to the fact that a lot of people believe there are still people out there who believe that getting a flu vaccine will give, can, will give them the flu and can give someone the flu. But, but that's actually a physical and possibility. Why? Oh, the, I mean, the one, the one myth that's always out there is the flu shot is a killed vaccine and you cannot catch a virus from a killed vaccine. There are some people that do get some mild aches and pains that are usually relieved by Tylenol or ibuprofen. So, you know, that they're very mild. There's the serious reactions to flu vaccine are extremely, extremely rare. Smaller subset of people may get more aches and pains for a couple of days and that's not, they did not catch the flu. What they're experiencing is a reaction to the body's immune system building up antibodies to the flu itself. So, you cannot catch the flu.

I mean, the first myth is that you can never catch the flu from a, you know, from a flu shot. Well, there, there's probably a few people out there still scratching their heads. I don't believe it, but we've, we've got an MD right here saying it to us. So, I appreciate you dispelling that myth. Now, let's move on to a thing you folks call pertussis and it's something folks like me call whooping cough. What is whooping cough? It's one of those diseases that in school, I always thought of as smallpox or tuberculosis. A disease of the past, that's not the case right now with whooping cough, is it? No, pertussis is, you know, is really commonly called whooping cough. I think most people in the public know it as whooping cough. And it was, you know, an extremely common disease before the onset of vaccinations. And with a lot of diseases in public health, we just think we have them, we think we have them whipped.

And then what happens is is that they tend to make comebacks and not because of anything that's, that, you know, the medical people in public health is doing wrong, it's because of the nature of the, the germ itself. And back in 1980, after the start of the vaccination, which is, you know, for, you know, for whooping cough, the pertussis vaccine, there was about a thousand cases. A year or two ago, we were, you know, well over 25,000 cases on a national basis, I should say. So you can see that even though the numbers for this country aren't that great, it is, you know, it is making a, you know, a fairly significant comeback. And the reason is what they did not know originally is because when the vaccine first came out, it is a highly effective vaccine, but it doesn't provide a hundred percent coverage. And then the, the coverage, you know, the immunity tends to wane or decrease after a number of years. So after five or 10 years, you vaccinated these kids and up to the last until this year, we only had vaccine for whooping cough up to age seven.

And now with the new, the new vaccine called the TDAP, we now are able to give booster vaccines that sort of corrects this problem. So all children that are, you know, between when they're due for their booster vaccines for tetanus, because this is a combined vaccine with tetanus tip theory and whooping cough all in one. When they're due for it between the ages of 11 and 18, then, you know, we're going to be, they're all going to be receiving the TDAP vaccine, which is the booster for pertussis. In addition, all adults, when they're due, all adults are supposed to get their tetanus shots every 10 years, or if you get a bad cut or any kind of cut and you haven't been vaccinated in 10 years. You know, we're going to be giving and recommending that everyone, all adults up to the age of 65, get a booster for tetanus that includes the the whooping cough vaccine. What's this, what this is going to accomplish is that the people that are, you know, that are most at risk are these little babies under the age of one who get the most severe complications with the pneumonia's and the, you know, even a few kids die over the course of, you know, the whooping cough every year.

We're going to be cutting down on their older siblings and their teenage kids that are coughing on these young babies and the adults as we get this vaccine out to the general public that we're going to be decreasing the transmission to the kids, the little babies and kids under one year, particularly that are most at risk from the very severe complications of whooping cough. Now, now, remind us again real quick and then we'll get to Amanda our next issue. Remind us at what age should, should someone or a parent get a booster or a parent of children? Did you say seven? Just remind us. Yeah, well, the, I mean, the big push is always we've had the vaccine for the under seven year old kid and kids all children under age seven. So, you know, all, all children get the vaccine are recommended to get the vaccine at two months, four months and six months of age, then they get a booster at four to six years of age.

And like I said, the big breakthrough with whooping cough now that we're really hoping to see a decrease national in the nationwide and in the state of New Mexico is to get when these when we get this vaccine out there that the kids who are do for their boosters, which is going to be usually at starting at age 11. But even any, you know, any child up to age 18, who's due for their booster will be getting the TDAP, which includes the vaccine for whooping cough. Now, all adults, like I said before, when you're due for your tetanus booster or if you get a bad cut and you haven't had a tetanus shot in the last five years or ten years, depending on how bad the cut is. We're all, we'd like everyone to get a TDAP so they will get immunity, get a booster for their immunity against whooping cough so they won't spread the disease to the younger children. And I did not mention that adults and older children do get whooping cough. It's a really prolonged cough illness that can last up to two months.

It's just that the most severe complications are always in the young, the very young children. Well, thank you very much. Now we're going to move on to a very tragic subject and a major problem here in our state, suicide rates. They're going up aren't they Amanda? Well, they've been up in New Mexico for a while. So I think probably one of the most important things we can say about suicide and suicide prevention is every suicide is preventable. Now, earlier you were giving me some statistics, some national numbers and some state numbers. Could you share those with us? Well, in New Mexico, we were ranked in the nation, we were ranked fifth in completed suicides, not in the top five that we want to be in obviously. No. And we are also in New Mexico, suicide is a second leading cause of death in our youth. The first being? Accidents. Accidents. Now, as something so preventable and something that is often often ignored and I remember the first time I logged on to the World Health Organization website.

And I was shocked to see that suicide was considered a public health problem. But New Mexico is taking hold of the reins in this. Tell us how? Well, New Mexico is really lucky because we have a governor who is very, very concerned about the rate of suicide in our state. And so what he has done has given the Department of Health, specifically of the Office of School and Adolescent Health, $500,000 to do prevention services. And that includes New Mexico Suicide Prevention Coalition, which has been in existence for at least 10 years. And they've been working kind of a grassroots organization. They've been working off of grants and donating their time. And so when they got this money, it was like, wow, we can really do something awesome with this money. And what they've done is they've had 10 suicide prevention classes. They call it suicide 101. And they've had them across the state. And the goal is to have another 10 next year. And they're going to build on that and do kind of a suicide 102. So more extensive topics into suicide.

And what it talks about is prevention, recognizing the signs, risk behaviors, protective factors, meaning factors that can actually prevent suicides like supportive family, that kind of thing. And it's been open to anyone who is interested in preventing suicide in our state, family members, survivors, health care workers, mental health professionals, school personnel. So they've been very successful. And we're going to build on that and go into next year and have 10 more. Now, a few words out there to parents. They see their child, maybe they're adolescent child, acting differently. What's their first step? Maybe this first fear comes in their mind. What's their first step? I think it's really important to understand that adolescence in itself is really a difficult time. There's changes all around between social and physical changes, societal pressures, school pressures. So sometimes adolescents have difficulty anyway.

So some parents may push those off as, oh, they're just teenagers, they're adolescents, that's kind of typical. What parents really want to be on the lookout for is a typical behavior. And so if a parent does notice, which hopefully they're in their children's lives, they're present, they have an active role in their lives. And so they can recognize when something is different and something is going on. And it doesn't seem right. First of all, I say, know your child and trust your gut. And when you do that, you can talk to school personnel. You can have them refer them to a local mental health provider that can do really good assessment. And you can ask, that is such an important thing is to ask. Are you having a hard time? What's going on? And people think the word suicide and Dr. Marciniac and I were talking about this earlier today, it's not, it's such a taboo subject that parents don't want to think that that could be an option for their child.

But it's okay to ask them. Are you thinking of, has that been a thought for you and go from there? Amanda, thank you so much, Dr. Marciniac. Thank you so much. It's time to move toward our final part of the show. And it's called the Greater Los Cruces Chamber of Commerce Local Business Feature. Well, we started this business. It's an independent investment management company. We started it in 1993, very early 1993. I've actually been in the investment business since 1983. So 23 years at this. We have about $150 million on deposit here. It's been a massive management. We have seven full-time employees. And we basically manage stock and bond portfolios. Not quite half of what we manage is on the stock side. And the balance is pretty much in fixed income instruments and that kind of thing.

The client that we're going to attract, whether it's a pension plan or a small business plan or an IRA account or an individual investor who's accumulated wealth after tax. A lot of those people know that they want to be involved in the equity markets or they want to invest in interest bearing instruments. But they think that the process of managing, ongoing monitoring and managing is better left to someone with more training and more time and more credentialed people to take care of those processes. We don't have minimums here. And I have a lot of people who work in our industry who, when we go to conferences and things and I tell them, no, we don't have minimums. They look at me like I'm crazy because how can you find time for the little guy? One of the experiences we've had is that we're here to provide services to the community. And I think that sometimes when you establish minimums, what you do is you project the wrong kind of image. We're working people.

Well, that just about wraps it up for this week. I'd like to thank our guest, Dr. Eugene Marciniac and Amanda Lopez from the New Mexico Department of Health here to talk about pertussis and flu and suicide prevention. Thank you all so much. And thank you all very much for watching this week. And I hope you join us again. Same time. Thank you all so much.

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