Minneapolis Star Tribune
“After boy's flu death, calls flood into doctors' offices”
A special flu shot clinic has been scheduled for Saturday in St. Paul.
Doctors' offices were fielding dozens of calls Thursday from worried parents and patients after the rare influenza-related death of an 8-year-old St. Paul boy.
Lucio Satar's death prompted Children's Hospital in St. Paul to schedule a special flu shot clinic Saturday morning for children 6 months and older and their parents.
About 50 calls flowed into each of the Children's Hospitals in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the state Health Department received about 100 calls, said Patsy Stinchfield, a pediatric nurse practitioner who leads the Minnesota Immunization Practices Advisory Committee.
Lucio, a second-grader at Four Seasons A+ School, was completely healthy before he started feeling sick Jan. 24. He was hospitalized last Friday and died early Wednesday from pneumonia, a complication connected to the Type A strain of the flu.
"It was just an unfortunate situation where the combination of the flu and the secondary infection was too much for him," said Kris Ehresmann, a Health Department epidemiologist.
Infectious disease experts said Lucio's death should not prompt parents to panic. But they added that it's not too late to have families vaccinated with flu shots that combat the Type A strain, among others.
"It's still absolutely worthwhile this year, especially because of our late onset of the flu season," Stinchfield said.
The Minnesota flu season usually starts in late December, but, Stinchfield said, the first cases this season didn't pop up until last week.
Three years ago, during another late season, flu cases were reported into April, so this could also turn out to be a longer season than usual.
While flu shots protect against Type A and other strains, it takes three to four weeks after receiving the vaccine for the body's immune system to produce enough antibodies to combat the flu.
Flu by the numbers
Stinchfield, the director of infectious diseases at Children's Hospitals of Minnesota, said that of the 36,000 people nationally who typically die from flu complications each year, 100 are children. About 70 of those children who die, like Lucio, are otherwise healthy.
"Even though it's uncommon in children, when it occurs, it usually occurs in healthy children," she said.
More than a dozen people Thursday called the United Family Practice Health Center near Lucio's school, asking for flu shots. The supply of the vaccine, once limited to high-risk people, is now plentiful enough that anyone who wants a shot can get one, doctors said.
"People have deferred because they don't have chronic diseases, they're not over 65 or between 6 and 59 months," Stinchfield said. "But anyone who wants to prevent getting influenza can and should be immunized to prevent terrible tragedies like this."
A memorial service for Lucio is scheduled for noon Saturday at the West Funeral Home, 1051 S. Robert St., West St. Paul.
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Macon Area Online
“9 children die from flu”
By: Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Fri Feb 2, 2007 8:20 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nine children have died of flu this season in Alabama, an unusually high number that has some experts worried, a pediatrician said on Thursday.
Dr. Richard Whitley of the University of Alabama at Birmingham said he had sent samples from the children to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for analysis.
"Nine children and we are a state of 4 million people," he said.
They were all affected with the regular seasonal flu, Whitley said in an interview, but were unusually ill with it.
"We have tried extravagant things (to save them)."
"These kids are presenting with an ARDS-like syndrome," he said. Acute respiratory distress syndrome usually only occurs with severe infections, and is not normally a symptom of influenza.
Normal seasonal influenza does kill children every year, even previously healthy children. Public health officials are watching flu more closely than before because of fears the H5N1 bird flu virus, a strain found primarily in birds but that has killed 164 people since 2003, might mutate into a fast-spreading and lethal pandemic form.
"Unfortunately, it is not unusual for there to be pediatric deaths in any flu season," CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding told reporters.
It takes years sometimes to get good estimates, but 153 children died in the 2003-2004 flu season, according to CDC figures. This year so far the CDC had reported eight deaths among children, but its statistics are usually several weeks old.
Whitley said his hospital started filling up with cases, mostly children, in December. The U.S. flu season normally runs from October to March.
"Our hospital has been at 115 percent occupancy," Whitley told reporters.
"We are not seeing influenza in our adult populations."
Most of the 36,000 Americans who die of flu and flu-related pneumonia in an average year are elderly.
Whitley said the annual flu wave was now starting to peter out in Alabama, but increased activity had been reported east, in South Carolina, and north in Illinois. The CDC says flu activity in the United States has not reached epidemic levels.
"We do know that the majority of virus circulating in this flu season is a strain that is an excellent match to the vaccine," Gerberding said. Every year, the flu vaccine is reformulated with three strains of flu that match the most common types in circulation.
The CDC now recommends that most people in the United States get flu vaccines every year, including young children, people over the age of 50, health care workers and people with chronic conditions such as diabetes.