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School Children Vulnerable To H1N1 Flu

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Sep 4, 2009 9:02 pm US/Eastern

School Children Vulnerable To H1N1 Flu

Reporting
Dr. Maria Simbra
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― The CDC has done some analysis to find out which groups are most vulnerable to H1N1 flu.

Every year, 50 to 100 children die of seasonal flu. And it looks like with H1N1 flu, it's children, and particularly older children, who are at risk.

In the U.S., 40 children have died – that's one in every 13 swine flu deaths and 80 percent of these kids were between 5 and 17.

"School brings all of these children together and concentrates them in the same place, they have a better chance to get infected," says Dr. Andrew Nowalk, an infectious diseases specialist at Children's Hospital.

"We get reports of students that are sick for two days and then they're feeling fine," says Dr. Ronald Voorhees of the Allegheny County Health Department.

Two-thirds of the children had epilepsy, cerebral palsy, or other neuro-developmental problems.

"Many of those children, because they have problems with their brain, often will have associated respiratory problems and those breathing problems predispose them to more severe versions of the flu anyways," explains Dr. Nowalk.

A bacterial infection on top of the H1N1 flu virus played a role in most of the deaths of otherwise healthy children.

"The flu knocks you down and the bacterial infection knocks you out," says Dr. Nowalk.

Generally kids start to get better in a few days from the flu. Getting worse is a red flag.

"When you see the child start to act a lot worse, or they're getting better and then they take a sharp turn for the worse, certainly that's something that's going to make us think more about a bacteria sneaking in and causing a secondary pneumonia, for example," he warns.

Because of these patterns, children with chronic health conditions and school age children will be the priority for vaccination.

Right now cases are most common in the southeast. So far, no signs the virus is mutating to become more deadly.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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