By Sherry F. Pruitt

JONESBORO — If ill, stay home.

If not, practice frequent handwashing and use hand sanitizer.

That’s advice from two advanced practice nurses — Lisa Shefelton, director of the Arkansas State University Student Health Center, and Lisa Waggoner, assistant director of the center.

The two are vocal about influenza type A because they are afraid employers either do not understand or do not recognize the seriousness of the contagious disease that can be deadly.

On the ASU campus the two nurses spend time lecturing about it and include information via the ASU digest, a campus-wide, online communication outlet.

“In the community employers need to be more informed about influenza A,” Shefelton said.

“Our goal is to educate the community,” Waggoner said. “We want to reach past the ASU campus.”

Most ASU students are employed in customer service positions such as restaurant servers and cooks, grocery baggers and checkers, department and store sales associates and day care providers. They come in direct contact with lots of people on a daily basis, she said.

They say they want students, as well as their employers, to understand that when workers have been diagnosed with the flu, they should stay home. Students go to work, though, because they need the income and they fear losing their job, Shefelton said.

“People don’t understand how contagious it is; they’re not informed on how easily it’s spread, and how deadly it is,” she said, referring to influenza type A.

“It adapts very easily to its environment,” Waggoner added.

“An individual diagnosed with influenza A is contagious for five to seven days. Individuals can spread the virus 24 hours prior to symptoms,” she said.

At the first sign of symptoms, they should see a health care professional who can prescribe anti-viral medication, which cuts the viral load and decreases the length of the illness, she added.

Waggoner said that employers, as well as faculty members who have sick students in class, should be supportive of their employees and students and rely on the health care professionals who treated them.

Germs from a coughing, sneezing sick person can travel some three feet away, Shefelton said.

Influenza A can live on money, grocery store cart handles, community computers, restroom door handles, at the fuel pumps and other public places that are often touched.

“The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was slightly above the epidemic threshold,” Shefelton said, meaning the number of illnesses and deaths is greater than what was predicted.

“Also, the people who go for outpatient visits with flu-like illnesses are above the national baseline level,” she noted.

In response, the nurses encourage using sanitizers. More often than in the past, wipes are available in grocery stores and hand sanitizers are available at bank counters, in doctor’s offices and in classrooms, they said.

Shefelton is so adamant about using the germ killer that she carries a small bottle of hand sanitizer on her key ring, and Waggoner uses so much she buys it by the liter.

“It can only help; it’s not going to hurt anything,” Waggoner said.

“It’s important in high population areas,” Shefelton added.

Because the nurses want the campus and community informed that this is one of the worst cold and flu seasons in the past few years, they plan to expand their expertise beyond ASU by visiting day care facilities and schools to speak out about the illnesses, as well as bird flu and the availability of anti-viral medications.

Shefelton and Waggoner, who attended graduate school together, are trained by the Center for Disease Control in influenza. They are Federal Emergency Management Agency- trained on three levels and hold basic disaster life support certification, which instructs them on handling mass disastrous situations, such as terroristic and pandemic events and natural disasters.

In addition, ASU is a surveillance site for the CDC, which means that figures reported nationally include Arkansas State University patients, Shefelton said.

sherry@jonesborosun.com