Word: tetanus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When I started working with UNICEF, one of the statistics I saw was that 40,000 children die every day from preventable diseases, such as measles, tetanus, diphtheria. The latest figures show that the number is down to 29,000. This gives me a certain sense of satisfaction--to know that our efforts make a difference...
...subject I would normally deem column worthy, but in this case the irony is too rich to ignore. For even as it celebrates the benefits of childhood vaccination, the U.S. is running out of the very vaccines needed to do the job. The biggest shortfalls: chicken-pox vaccine, various tetanus vaccines and the so-called pneumococcal conjugate vaccine...
...government is about to spend $850 million to make sure there's enough smallpox vaccine to protect every man, woman and child against the theoretical risk of a bioterrorist attack. Yet at the same time it's having trouble protecting kids from the clear and present danger of tetanus and meningitis...
...reasons for the shortages differ for each vaccine. For example, the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis) vaccine got hit by a double whammy. One of its major producers, then called Wyeth Lederle Vaccines, left the market just as new rules to cut down the mercury in the vaccine began to take effect. Aventis, another major DTaP producer, was caught off guard and had trouble overhauling its manufacturing process while simultaneously ramping up production. Making vaccines isn't a particularly profitable business, so there isn't a lot of competition for the work...
VACCINES CLEARED Two of the most common childhood vaccines cause no long-lasting harm, even in kids who experience rare seizures after immunization. The biggest-ever study of side effects from the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) and diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (DTP) vaccines concludes fears of autism and developmental problems are unfounded...