Dangers of Chickenpox
Prior to the introduction of vaccine in 1995 in the US (released in 1988 in Japan & Korea), there were around 4,000,000 cases per year in the U.S., mostly children, with typically 10,500–13,000 hospital admissions (range, 8,000–18,000), and 100–150 deaths each year. Though mostly children caught it, the majority of deaths (by as much as 80%) were among adults.
During 2003 and the first half of 2004, the CDC reported eight deaths from varicella, six of whom were children or adolescents. These deaths and hospital admissions have substantially declined in the U.S. due to vaccination, though the rate of shingles infection has increased for the same reason. Ten years after the vaccine was recommended in the U.S., the CDC reported as much as a 90% drop in chicken pox cases, a varicella-related hospital admission decline of 71% and a 97% drop in chicken pox deaths among those under 20.
Read more about this topic: Varicella Vaccine
Famous quotes containing the words dangers of and/or dangers:
“One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)