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The Most Vulnerable Pay a High Price for Flu Infection
She was seven months pregnant, a Hispanic woman on Medicaid living with her husband and five other children in a cramped apartment. But then she came down with the flu. Suddenly, acutely ill, she was rushed to a hospital, delivered her baby in an emergency surgery and died a few days later without ever having held the child.
The Santa Ana, Calif., woman was among dozens of pregnant women who died during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009. Approximately 6 percent of the deaths caused by H1N1 occurred in pregnant women, a rate that far exceeded any other group. Expectant mothers are among several types of people who are much more vulnerable to the influenza virus than the rest of the population, including young children and older people, people with asthma, Native Americans and those with heart disease. Flu can also make chronic health conditions worse, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Instead of the flu being a miserable experience that causes a few days of missed work, the price more susceptible people pay for infection can be significantly higher, such as hospitalization and even death. Curtailing the economic and social costs of flu complications has become a major public-health imperative in recent years. Each year in the United States, flu causes several thousand deaths and more than 200,000 hospitalizations.
Still, only about 20 percent of people who are particularly vulnerable to complications from the flu get vaccinated, Dr. Gregory A. Poland, director of Translational Immunovirology and Biodefense at the Mayo Clinic and Foundation in Rochester, Minn., told TakePart.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/10/…nsequences
2012-12-23 12:19:01
Source: http://yeoldefalseflag.com/thread-the-most-vulnerable-pay-a-high-price-for-flu-infection
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