Sat 31 Oct 2009
U.S. Releases Its Stockpile of Tamiflu for Children
Posted by admin under Health , National Comments Off
(From the New York Times) Swine flu is sickening so many children across the country, some of them fatally, that federal health officials decided Friday to release the last of the national stockpile of children’s Tamiflu.
Even though the winter flu season has yet to begin, flu has now killed 114 children and teenagers in the United States since April, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since the C.D.C. began tracking children’s flu deaths five years ago, the highest toll was 88, in the winter of 2007-8; many more children died in the pandemics of 1918, 1957 and 1968, but there are no accurate counts.
Dr. Frieden’s figures were for deaths confirmed by laboratories. On Thursday, the C.D.C. estimated that in the swine flu’s spring wave there were 2.7 deaths for each confirmed one, so the actual number of children’s deaths may be closer to 300.
Read more here: U.S. Releases Its Stockpile of Tamiflu for Children





