The flu shot saves children ’s lives

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Of the 358 children who died from influenza between 2010 and 2014, only 26% had been vaccinated against it, according to a study just released in the journal Pediatrics.
That means 74%, or three out of four of them, had not. And maybe if they had been vaccinated, they’d be alive right now.
Of all the vaccines I give as a pediatrician, the flu shot is the one that families refuse most. Parents don’t think they need it. They don’t think it works. They think it is dangerous. This frustrates me, because none of these reasons for refusing the flu shot are true.
Influenza can be a dangerous disease. Every year, it kills thousands of people. The 358 above is the number of children who died of what was proven to be influenza by testing; but testing isn’t always done, so the number is likely much higher. And many people die of complications of influenza, such as bacterial pneumonia — or, for people who have chronic conditions, the stress on their body of influenza leads to fatal problems from their condition. For this reason, it’s extremely difficult to know how many people influenza kills each year. But millions of people catch it, and hundreds of thousands end up hospitalized. While many people are just miserable with fever and cough for a few days, for some people it is far more serious.
Of those 358 children in the study, 153 had conditions that put them at higher risk of getting sicker from the flu. That means that more than 200 were hea...

Source: Harvard Health Blog - April 4, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Cold and Flu Infectious diseases Parenting Prevention Vaccines Source Type: blogs