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medpundit |
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Monday, February 03, 2003About 50 public health officials from across Northeast Tennessee, including Greene County, began receiving smallpox vaccinations here on Friday. The vaccinations were administered at the Northeast Tennessee Regional Health Office to those public health nurses and physicians who will later be giving the same vaccinations to others. “Today we’re vaccinating the ‘vaccinators’ — the people who will be working in the clinics and so forth,” said Shirley Hughes, bioterrorism director for the Northeast Tennessee Regional Health Office. “After that, the hospital workers will receive the vaccine.” About 700 employees from 14 area hospitals are scheduled to receive the vaccine between Feb. 10 and March 7 at the regional health office. Statewide, about 5,800 health care workers are scheduled to receive the vaccine during that time. But, in Canada, doctors are reluctant to do anything: The problem is that getting the smallpox shot carries risks of a serious adverse reaction or death. Moreover, those people who get the shot can spread the vaccine running throughout their body just by touching someone else -- say a family member -- which then puts that person at risk of developing serious side-effects. Well, that’s not exactly true. A person has to touch the site of vaccination to risk getting infected by it. And that is easily controlled by keeping the site well-covered. Meanwhile, the military has vaccinated tens of thousands of soldiers with two reactions so far. One was a local skin reaction, the other encephalitis. Both are recovering uneventfully: Two soldiers out of "tens of thousands" who have received the smallpox vaccination have displayed "noteworthy" reactions, according to a Department of Defense statement Friday. One was hospitalized and the other being monitored by medical authorities, and both are said to be doing well, according to the statement. "Our safety experience with smallpox vaccinations to date is consistent with what we expected overall. We have seen a small number of adverse reactions to the vaccine, mostly minor," said William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, in the statement. "We can expect additional reactions to occur, some will be significant reactions," according to the statement. posted by Sydney on 2/03/2003 08:26:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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