Safety Minute – Tetanus Booster

By Harmon Everett

 

Tetanus Booster

Remember to get your tetanus booster shot every 5 years.

Painting by Sir Charles Bell - 1809

In this heightened awareness of vaccines environment we live in today, one vaccine that may get forgotten is a regular tetanus booster vaccine.

We all have heard that we should get annual Flu vaccinations, and now regular Pneumonia vaccinations, and it is getting to be normal to get regular vaccinations against the latest Covid variant. But as folks that spend a lot of time in the outdoors, we need to remember to keep our tetanus vaccine up-to-date, too.

Whatever you think about the Covid vaccine, the effectiveness of the tetanus vaccine can not be doubted. In the 1950’s it was normal for 400 to 500 people in the United States to suffer from tetanus every year. These days, there are about 30 cases in the US every year, almost all of them are in people who had not been vaccinated. In 2015, there were about 209,000 infections worldwide and about 59,000 deaths globally. Even with treatment, about 10% of people who contract tetanus die.

Tetanus typically lives in warm, damp climates, with plenty of organic material. It enters a person’s bloodstream through punctures or tears in your skin. A deep puncture is more liable to harbor tetanus. 

The recommendation for years has been to have a tetanus booster shot every 10 years, but recently my doctor told me that the recommendation is being adjusted to getting the booster shot every 5 years.

We are pretty much always messing about in the outdoors, in warm, damp environs, and regularly suffer cuts, scrapes and punctures from our boats, our equipment, and various rusty metal pokey things we run into. Often literally. Get your tetanus booster shot.

See you On The Water,

Harmon

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