Two months before her due date, Valerie Post was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with swine flu. Doctors performed an emergency C-section and delivered a healthy baby girl, Nora. But Post, 24, has been in a medically induced coma since the Aug. 7 delivery.
Swine flu usually causes only mild problems in otherwise healthy people. But it can strike harder in pregnant women, and doctors are urging them to get the vaccine once it’s available in October. The hospital in Tampa, where Post is being treated, reports that an average of one pregnant woman a week has been hospitalized for the flu. Usually it’s about two per season, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
Cases as severe as Post’s are rare, but doctors are urging expecting moms are urged to call immediately if they have a fever, cough or sore throat. For the latest updates on swine flu, click on the Centers for Disease Control Web site.
This fall and winter, when health officials anticipate a surge in swine flu (H1N1) cases, there likely won’t be enough vaccines to go around. Wednesday, health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended which Americans should have access to the H1N1 vaccine first, according to the New York Times.
Pregnant women, caregivers for infants under age six months old, children and young adults ages six months up to 24 years old were all among the group of 150 million Americans who should be given top priority, according to the CDC. The federal government expects about 120 million doses of the vaccine available by the end of October.
In the United States, pregnant women have been particularly hard hit by swine flu. Expectant moms make up about six percent of verified swine flu deaths in the country, while pregnant mothers only account for one percent of the U.S. population.
The CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the World Health Organization all recommend that pregnant women get seasonal flu shots, too, in order to protect themselves and their babies-on-the-way.
For more information on flu shots and pregnancy from the CDC, click here.
Hunter Pope’s death might have been prevented if he had gotten a flu shot. But his mother says that he had lost his vaccination permission slip and never got the shot at school, the Boston Herald reported.
Hunter, a seventh-grader in Boston, died Sunday at a hospital. A doctor with the city health commission said that the boy did not seem to have any other health problems. Hunter is fifth child to die from the flu this winter, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This was the first winter that the federal government recommended that all children, not just those under 5, get a flu shot. Hunter’s mother, Tess Pope, said she did not know until after his death that he had lost the permission slip.
Pope told the Herald that Hunter started feeling feverish on Friday, but wanted to go to school to celebrate Valentine’s Day. He was later sent home that day with a 101-degree temperature. Early Saturday, his parents rushed him to the emergency room after he was vomiting and complaining of severe body aches and burning. He died the next morning.
Three families with autistic kids had sought to be compensated by the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. But a special court panel ruled on Thursday that there was insufficient evidence of a link between autism and early childhood vaccines, CNN reported.
The plaintiffs included the Cedillo family, whose 14-year-old daughter cannot speak and wears a diaper. Judge George L. Hastings Jr. said in his ruling that he had deep sympathy for the three families, but “must decide this case not on sentiment, but by analyzing the evidence.”
Scientists say that it’s unclear what causes autism, a range of disorders that inhibits a child’s ability to interact and communicate and affects 1 in 150 American kids. A big study last year found no link between autism and vaccines. The British researcher who in 1998 suggested that a link existed has been under investigation for various charges of professional misconduct.
More than 5,300 parents of autistic children have filed cases, seeking damage awards from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Celebrities including Jenny McCarthy, who has an autistic son, have staged anti-vaccine rallies. Many parents have refused to get their children vaccinated against measle, mumps and rubellas, which has triggered outbreaks of the diseases and major public health concerns.
The children died during the first week of January and were from Colorado and Texas, according to a flu report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are the first flu-related deaths this winter.
Flu season usually begins in October or November, but has been late this season. The CDC collects weekly reports from health departments around the country, and it was only in mid-January that Virginia became the first state to show a widespread outbreak. Regional pockets of infection have been reported in Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York. (The reports are a couple of weeks behind because of the lag in collecting data.)
Authorities say it’s not too late to get a flu shot. The CDC recommended for the first time this season that vaccinations should be given to all kids, not just those under 5. To see if the illness is showing up in your state, track the virus here, with the weekly CDC reports.
Hospital visits for infant diarrhea has dropped at least 80 percent since the introduction of a vaccine for rotavirus two years ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The vaccine also appears to be preventing illness in unvaccinated children because the reduction in infections overall reduces the chances that kids can pick up and spread the virus.
Rotavirus, which causes vomiting, diarrhea, fever and abdominal pain, caused the hospitalization of more than 55,000 U.S. children each year, according to an Associated Press story. More than 200,000 infants were treated in emergency rooms. But last winter, a CDC study found that rotavirus cases were dropping and were much less extensive than in previous years. The results were reported Saturday at a Washington conference on infectious diseases.
The oral vaccine Rotateq is given to babies at two, four and six months of age. Another vaccine that came on the market in June requires just two doses, to be completed by four months of age.
New Jersey is the first and only state in the country mandating that all kids ages six months to five years old get a flu shot before attending a preschool or day-care center.
Hundreds of angry parents marched outside the state’s capitol building on Thursday, carrying signs like “Mommy knows best.” “This is not an anti-vaccine rally — it’s a freedom of choice rally,” said one of the organizers, Louise Habakus, told the Associated Press. “This one-size-fits-all approach is really very anti-American.”
The policy, approved by the state’s Public Health Council, took effect this fall. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, but does not require, flu shots for kids under age 5, who can be particularly vulnerable to the illness. This year, federal officials added all kids under 18 to its guidelines and is conducting an aggressive campaign urging parents to comply.
Several New Jersey lawmakers are proposing a bill that would allow parents to opt out of the flu shots. The state health department opposes the move. “Broad exemptions to mandatory vaccination weaken the entire compliance and enforcement structure,” the health department said in a statement.
Jenny McCarthy won’t accept Amanda Peet’s apology for referring to moms who don’t want their kids vaccinated as “parasites.”
“She has a lot of balls,” McCarthy recently told Spectrum, an autism magazine. “There is an angry mob on my side.” Meow!
To pile on, national advocacy group Autism United has called for a boycott of Amanda’s movies, Fox News reported. So far, no response from the star of “Igby Goes Down.”
Jenny and her supporters believe that vaccines can cause autism and wants the federal government to remove what they say are toxins in vaccines. The former Playboy Playmate and star of “Scary Movie 3,” who has a six-year-old son with autism, led a rally on the issue in Washington this summer.
Team Amanda charges that moms like Jenny are the reason for the recent measles outbreak. The actress is a spokesmom for Every Child by Two, which encourages parents to get their child fully vaccinated by age 2. She got involved after the American Academy of Pediatrics realized it couldn’t handle Jenny by itself and needed a celebrity on its side. Should we just settle this on “Dancing with the Stars”?
Getting this vaccine isn’t an OK for your daughter to start sleeping around.
But that’s apparently what a lot of parents think. Many parents don’t want their girls to get the shots for human papillomavirus, or HPV, because they don’t want to think about their kids becoming sexually active, according to a National Public Radio story. A survey of moms who are nurses found that most didn’t want to give the vaccine to their daughters until they were at least 15.
Just one in five girls under the age of 18 has received the vaccine that can protect them against cervical cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recommends that girls receive the HPV vaccine at age 11 or 12, so they are protected before they become sexually active. The vaccine provides no protection once a girl is exposed to the strain of the virus that causes cervical cancer.
HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world, and some strains of the virus can lead to cervical cancer or genital warts. Every year, about 12,000 women are told they have cervical cancer, and about 4,000 die from it, according to the CDC.
Do you want your child to die because you didn’t take her in for a flu shot?
That’s the message in a new video from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I should have got Emily a flu shot,” says a distraught mother in the video, which features families whose kids have died because of the flu.
Flu-shot season officially began this week as federal health officials rolled out urgent messages pleading everyone to face the needle. This year, as reported earlier on Minor Troubles, the CDC is recommending shots for all children, not just those under age 5. The flu kills about 36,000 Americans a year, and hospitalizes about 200,000, according to the CDC.
The feds may be using scare tactics this year because most people haven’t paid attention previously. Just 25 percent of kids under age two got shots during the 2006-07 flu season, the latest statistics available. Not even health care workers, who could be infected by patients and pass it along to others easily, have complied – only 42 percent of them get vaccinated.
