The Wall Street Journal-20080124-Few Adults Receive New Vaccines
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Few Adults Receive New Vaccines
Associated Press
Vaccines aren't just for kids, but far too few grown-ups are rolling up their sleeves, federal health officials reported.
The numbers of newly vaccinated are surprisingly low, considering how much public attention a trio of new shots -- which protect against shingles, whooping cough and cervical cancer -- received in recent years.
Yet many seem to have missed, or forgotten, the news: A survey by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases found that aside from the flu, most adults have trouble even naming diseases that they could prevent with a simple inoculation.
"We really need to get beyond the mentality that vaccines are for kids. Vaccines are for everybody," said Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who called the new data sobering. "We obviously have a lot more work to do."
The new CDC report found:
-- Only about 2% of Americans ages 60 and older received a vaccine against shingles in its first year of sales.
There are more than one million new cases a year of shingles, an excruciating rite of aging that causes a blistering skin rash. Up to 200,000 of them develop a complication, severe nerve pain that can last for months or even years. Anyone who ever had chickenpox is at risk, especially once they hit their 60s, because the chickenpox virus hibernates for decades in nerve cells until erupting again.
-- About 2% of adults ages 18 to 64 got a booster shot against whooping cough in the two years since it hit the market. The cough, so strong it can break a rib, is making a comeback because the vaccine given to babies and toddlers starts wearing off by adolescence.
-- About 10% of women ages 18 to 26 have received at least one dose of a three-shot series that protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes cervical cancer. Usually, the body gets rid of HPV without symptoms. But certain high-risk strains can cause genital warts or cervical cancer.
