Reflections on School Nursing in Israel - and the Business of Health Care for Profit focus: Vaccine Side effects and School Nursing

 

The school nurse in Israel used to be present once a week in a school. This means, if she vaccinated on a Thursday, the following Thursday she could check in with the pupils to see if they experienced any side effects form the vaccine.

 

 

 

I was a school nurse in Israel for 21 years. In about 2005, we started traveling among more schools, and were not present weekly to check on the children, instead, we were told to tell the school if their teachers noticed any side effects.

How can teachers be the ones to report side effects? What happened was that we only heard about side effects if there was a crisis, such as many children absent, or many complaining of pain, fever, rash, etc.

Teachers in turn became more stressed. They were under increasing pressure to complete their curriculum, they had little time for vaccines and I doubt if they were able to recognize subtle side effects of vaccines.

One way to run a business is to overwork the employees until they cannot think objectively anymore.

Now that school nursing is behind me, I can reflect on how things changed slowly, always getting worse.

Since epidemiology is dynamic, school nurses were a valuable set of eyes to look for side effects and note any new side effects that may be developing.

That extra set of eyes is gone. Just like new strains develop, new side effects develop. But we are not there to witness them.

 

Israelis spend much time looking at the latest war, terror attack, and NOT at the deterioration of services in what is supposed to be a country with semi- socialism and public services.

 

 

And that becomes a business opportunity, while the Israeli population looks the other way.