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Outbreak of Chickenpox Reported at SLU |
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| August 31, 2009 |
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| "Three students at St. Louis
University are suspected to have chickenpox, according to a health alert
sent to the campus on Friday. Chickenpox is a virus marked by a skin rash
and fever. Public health officials consider three cases of chickenpox in one
school an outbreak. Chickenpox is contagious through contact with sores,
coughing and sneezing. The disease is generally not considered threatening
but can be more serious in adolescents and adults..." |
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Chickenpox Killed My Daughter |
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| Daily Mirror (UK) |
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| July 9, 2009 |
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| "Most see it as no more than a harmless
childhood illness, but chickenpox can kill, as grieving mum Angie Bunce-Mason
found out. When her three-year-old Elana got chickenpox, Angie Bunce-Mason
was relieved at first to be getting the common childhood illness out of the
way. But, just six days later, Elana was dead, killed by a disease most
people consider harmless..." |
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| ACIP: No Preference for Separate MMR and Varicella Vaccines |
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| MedPage Today |
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| June 30, 2009 |
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| “The government's vaccine advisory panel has endorsed giving an infant varicella vaccine either by itself or in combination with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR)...” |
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NH to Require More School Immunizations |
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| Boston Globe |
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| March 4, 2009 |
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| "Starting next fall, New Hampshire will require chicken pox and whooping
cough booster shots before
children can attend school. Health experts thought the two diseases had
been largely stamped out
years ago, but the state says chicken pox and whooping cough have
resurfaced in American schools.
Marcella Bobinsky, New Hampshire's immunization program manager, says
the state is making the
change to comply with the vaccination schedule recommended by the
federal government. She said New
Hampshire saw 227 confirmed cases of whooping cough in 2006..." |
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Big Metro School District Alerts Families about Chickenpox Uptick: One
Eagan elementary school has had more than 30 cases since January |
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| March 3, 2009 |
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| "A large Twin Cities school district
is concerned about dozens of chickenpox cases surfacing lately among
students and is alerting families. The 28,000-student Rosemount-Apple
Valley-Eagan district is reporting today that Dakota County and state
health officials are recommending that a second dose of the varicella
(chickenpox) vaccine be given to all students who have had just one
dose..." |
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Doctors Wary of Dangerous Pox Parties |
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| ABC News |
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| February 2, 2009 |
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| "Despite the availability of a vaccine against chickenpox since 1995, a
number of parents organize
chickenpox parties for their young children, believing that allowing
their children to contract the
virus naturally when they are younger eliminates any side effects from
the vaccine and prevents
them from catching it when they are older. However, medical
professionals insist that chickenpox
parties are dangerous and expose children to severe and potentially
fatal side effects of the
virus, such as encephalitis..." |
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Workers with Chicken Pox OK |
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| Straits Times |
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| December 30, 2008 |
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| "On Dec. 28, a foreign worker in
Singapore was found dead in his living quarters after being sick with
chickenpox for about six days. Ten other workers were hospitalized with
chickenpox and are recovering, according to Singapore's Communicable
Disease Centre. Chickenpox can be fatal if it infects the body's organs,
especially the lung, nervous system, and liver, says Associate Professor
Leo Yee Sin, the centre's clinical director. The 10 hospitalized workers
were all from Bangladesh and between 20 and 35 years of age. They were
employed by a ship repair and dormitory services firm, as was the worker
who died..." |
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Another Possible Chickenpox Case in Monroe |
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| The Herald |
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| November 29, 2008 |
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| "Another suspected case of
chickenpox would make 18 since October reported at Salem Woods
Elementary School in Monroe. School and Snohomish Health District
officials declared an outbreak of the disease last week at the school
that has 507 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. A school
district spokeswoman, Rosemary O'Neil, told The Everett Herald that of
the 411 students who needed a vaccination shot, all but 22 have been
cleared to return to school..." |
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| Chickenpox Parties Popping up Despite Vaccine, Some Parents Still Want Kids to Get Illness |
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| Chicago Tribune |
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| September 16, 2008 |
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| "As Tabitha Keller drove her two young children to attend a chickenpox party earlier this year, she felt a moment of doubt about the wisdom of intentionally infecting her kids with the bug. Keller did not trust the chickenpox vaccine, so she was arranging for her children to get immunity the old-fashioned way, by catching the disease from an infected child and muddling through weeks of itchiness. Such chickenpox parties were also held in the pre-vaccine era because some experts argued it was safest for kids to get the disease early in life, when the effects tend to be relatively mild. Although most pediatricians today advise against chickenpox parties, some parents who avoid the vaccination for medical or religious reasons seek out such get-togethers on Internet message boards..." |
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| Chickenpox Vaccine Does a Number on the Number of Cases |
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| USA Today |
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| September 1, 2008 |
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| "Cases of chickenpox — a childhood infection that was once nearly universal — have fallen 57% to 90% in communities across the USA since a vaccine was introduced in 1995, a new report shows. Before the vaccine, 4 million Americans a year came down with chickenpox, nearly 11,000 were hospitalized and more than 140 died, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in today's Pediatrics..." |
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| CDC Clarifies Preference on Childhood Vaccines |
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| Bloomberg |
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| March 13, 2008 |
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| "Children who get a combined vaccine against measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox are slightly more likely to have seizures compared to those getting two separate shots for the same diseases, U.S. officials said on Thursday. The seizures are not usually life-threatening and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was no longer expressing a preference that children get the so-called MMRV combined vaccine rather than two shots -- the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (German measles) and a separate one against varicella (chicken pox)..." |
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