It's Tick Season!
Tick-borne diseases occur worldwide, including in your own backyard.
To help protect yourself and your family, you should:
- Use a chemical repellent with DEET, permethrin or picaridin
- Wear light-colored protective clothing
- Wear pants and tuck pant legs into socks
- Avoid tick-infested areas (Grassy and heavy woods)
- Check yourself, your children and your pets daily for ticks and carefully remove any ticks you find
- Bathe or shower as soon as possible after coming indoors
- Examine your clothes, gear and pets
- Tumble clothing on high in dryer for 1 hour to kill off any travelling ticks
Protect yourself and those around you. Get the influenza vaccine.
For most of us, influenza will cause a few days of fever, cough and generally feeling unwell. But for some, this highly contagious respiratory disease can lead to severe complications requiring hospitalization, or even to death.
Many Canadians don’t know that children under the age of five and seniors over sixty-five, people with chronic illnesses such as asthma, diabetes or heart disease, pregnant women, Aboriginal people, people who are obese, and residents of nursing homes and other health care facilities are vulnerable groups that need protection from influenza.
This makes influenza prevention by healthy individuals who can pass it on to those at high risk for severe complications a necessity. Healthy individuals can shed the influenza virus and transmit it before they experience any symptoms. That’s why it is so important to get vaccinated against influenza every year.
This fall, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommends that all Canadians six months of age and older receive the seasonal influenza vaccine. The seasonal influenza vaccine is safe and the most effective way of preventing the spread of influenza.