Get Set for Another Stick, Kids
Parents of healthy preschoolers: Your children need a flu shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending for the first time that all children from 6 months to 5 years old should be immunized against seasonal flu-and last week, the CDC announced that enough vaccine should be available this year for all comers.
Previously, the agency recommended vaccinating children from 6 months to age 2, recognizing that flu can be deadly in the very young and also that young children spread flu germs far more effectively than adults. Parents, siblings, and baby sitters of young children should also get flu shots, says Daniel Jernigan, deputy director of the CDC's influenza division, particularly since babies under 6 months can't get the shot. And vaccination is particularly important for children who have chronic ailments like asthma, who are much more likely than their peers to be hospitalized with flu complications.
This story appears in the October 16, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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