Two Shot Schedule Cuts Chickenpox Occurrence By 90%

It’s a success story, applauded by all, for the chicken pox vaccine that has helped slash the occurrence of the serious, yet not so seriously taken disease, by around 90% in children, bringing down death rates world over. The celebrations however are tainted with concerns for the large number of kids still going unprotected.

Released in the journal Paediatrics, the study stresses on the two shot schedule of vaccination for complete protection against the disease. While the first shot provides 85% protection, there are still chances that someone might get it, thus the second shot ensures complete safety, despite the fact that no vaccine ever provides 100% protection.

It is of grave concern to the researchers that people do not take the disease seriously, not even in children and there are many children still not vaccinated.

It thus might sound as an encouraging piece of data for some parents that reports from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed a 75% decline in number of chickenpox/ varicella related hospitalizations between 1995 and 2005 and a 74% decline in the disease related deaths, especially in children, which is over 90%.

Before the introduction of the vaccine there were around $million Americans contacted the disease every year 90% of whom were below 15 years of age, with severe case 10,000 hospitalizations. While the child deaths, which were atleast 50-60 each year back then, have become very rare now, all thanks to the vaccine.

"The U.S. varicella vaccination program has dramatically reduced varicella incidence and related complications, hospitalizations and deaths," the authors conclude.

Chicken pox is a disease that’s all about itching bumps on the skin all over the body, scaling off and on, red in colour; the bumps force the individual into atleast 15 days of isolation, with layers of calamine lotion to bear with, till it eventually dies off leaving scars to keep as a memory.

However, Mark Slifka, associate scientist at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University, says the very fact that most young Americans have been spared these unpleasant memories is a victory in and of itself.

"This is really quite an achievement," he says. "In just one generation, we have changed chickenpox from a virus that nearly every child had to suffer, to a virus that is causing only a handful of infections."

But since the infection of the once got over chicken pox does not completely go away from the body and resurfaces in the form of shingles, much later, it is difficult for researchers to predict that the disease can be completely eradicated ever.

But still the statistics obtained are quite an encouragement and quite positive for all, because no matter what people might think of chicken pox, researchers believe that it is not to be taken as a mere, mild childhood disease.

Chicken pox is known to have led to other serious ailments like- pneumonia, encephalitisdefine, bacterial infections and bleeding disorders. The main reason being, careless handling of the open skin lesions which attract more infection and even skin eating bacteria.

Thus, the one thing to be remembered with diseases like chicken pox where you never know who might get it and when, is that, prevention is the best cure for them.