October 28, 2013
USA Today (10/28, Hellmich, 5.82M) reports that, according to research to appear in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics, influenza “can be fatal to children, even healthy kids who don’t have other medical conditions.” Investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that “830 kids died from flu-related complications between October 2004 and September 2012, and most of those children had not gotten a flu vaccine.” According to CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, “All too often, people dismiss flu as a mild illness, but every year, children, including healthy children, die from flu.”
The New York Times (10/28, Bakalar, 9.61M) “Well” blog reports that “most of the children died within a week of the appearance of symptoms, and a third of them died outside the hospital or in an emergency” department. Dr. Karen K. Wong, a CDC medical officer, pointed out that the study “shows that even healthy children are at risk, and that’s why it’s important for every child to get vaccinated.” In fact, the CDC recommends “a flu shot for everyone six months or older.”
(Article courtesy of American Medical Association.)
