Immunisations help protect against serious, vaccine preventable diseases. Once we’ve been immunised, our bodies are better able to fight these diseases if we come into contact with them.
   
Over this winter the Scottish Government extended the flu vaccination campaign to help prevent flu
co-circulating with Coronavirus (COVID-19).  Although challenging for all staff involved, it was crucial to support this preventative health intervention.

Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) hosts the Childhood Immunisation Team on behalf of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, delivering the National Childhood Immunisation Programmes for the childhood population across the Health Board. Ordinarily the Childhood Immunisation Team consists of the Pre-Five Immunisation Team and The School Immunisation Team. 

The School Immunisation Team normally deliver the flu vaccination to all primary schools across NHSGGC. However, this winter the programme was extended to include all high school pupils, teachers and front-facing pupil support staff. This was a massive but important task.

Due to this expansion of the flu programme we needed to expand our Childhood Immunisation Team to include two new teams to carry out the High School Flu Immunisation programme and the programme for Children aged Two to Five Years. 
 
Janet Murray, School Immunisation Team Lead, NHSGGC said: “Since the introduction of our immunisation teams in 2015, there has been many challenges. However, this year has by far been the most challenging for our staff. Due to the pandemic, schools were closed earlier this year, which meant catch up programmes for routine immunisations. With excellent coordination, planning and also impromptu readiness to help each other, we were able to work through this.”

Mandy Miller, Team Lead for the High School Flu Team added: “The extension to the flu programme meant we required high levels of staff to deliver this over October to December 2021. However, the main challenges resulted from lack of staff, difficulty in recruitment and a high volume of sickness absence including staff isolating / contracting COVID-19. The immunisation of school staff also went well. The use of regular bank staff contributed to the smooth running of the sessions. All sessions were completed despite the added pressure of COP26 in November. This was only achieved by the flexibility and goodwill of our staff.”

Frances Curran, Team Lead for the Two to Five Year Old Child Flu Team said: “We used various approaches to ensure a flexible and equitable service was provided to meet the needs of children and young people within Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The amazing support we received from our colleagues in Pre-5 Immunisation and Children and Families teams helped us achieve this, and a huge thank you to them. Working together we achieve more."

Norma Millar, Team Lead for the Preschool Immunisation Team said: “Many thanks to all the Children and Families and Family Nurse Partnership teams for all their help and support with encouraging attendance over NHSGGC.” 

Mags Simpson, Service Manager for our HSCP’s North East Locality said: “All staff did an incredible job under extraordinary circumstances. This is evident by statistics from the uptake of vaccines across the area. We managed to vaccinate an impressive 120,000 children and young people and 6,000 education staff across the NHSGGC area.

“I’d like to give a huge thanks to all our Community Nurses, Health and Social Care Workers, our Business Support team, Child Health Screening, Pharmacy and Transport staff and our Children's Community Nursing Team (Additional Support for Learning Schools).”