The flu has also been “underdiagnosed and undervalued” in the child population, when it is much more than a cold with fever: the incidence exceeds 45% and seven out of every ten hospital admissions – with rates that equal those of adults – occur in healthy children without risk factors.
This was stated by pediatricians and nursing staff at the ‘Pediatric Flu Vaccination’ conference promoted by the General Nursing Council in collaboration with AstraZeneca, in which they stressed the error of trivializing this virus and the importance of pediatric and adult vaccination .
On average, the flu causes 58,640 Primary Care consultations each year in Spain and 4,239 admissions of children under five years of age, of which 822 are serious and 249 lead to the ICU, stressed Jaime Pérez, president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology.
Sensitive group
It is the group that has the highest risk of complications. Every year, on average, eight children under five years old die (between 20 and 30 in the entire pediatric age group), although in the 2017-2018 season they reached 56. The vaccine reduces 93% of admissions.
With a coverage of 56%, the inactivated and attenuated intranasal vaccines currently available are 76% effective, reducing Primary consultations by 90%, emergencies by 74% and admissions by 93%, highlighted the deputy director of Health Care and Nursing Management in Area IV of Oviedo, Emilio Velasco.
And this without these drugs being associated with an increase in respiratory infection, febrile seizures or autoimmune diseases after their administration. Each season, the beginning of the epidemic outbreak in children precedes that in adults by two weeks and represents a vector for the spread of the disease; At the beginning, more than 60% of those infected are under fourteen years of age, who play a “fundamental role in transmission to vulnerable risk groups” and lead to a large consumption of health resources.
“The flu is not a banal disease, it is an unpredictable threat,” warned Francisco Álvarez, member of the Vaccine Advisory Committee of the Spanish Pediatric Association.
The expert recalled that the age groups from zero to four years and from five to 17 years are those that accumulate the highest incidence, with figures that exceed 45%.
Although it is normal for the flu to be mild, “it can cause significant complications.” In fact, the hospitalization rate of children under two years of age equals and even exceeds that of those over 65 years of age, reaching 40 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with the difference that the majority are healthy: two out of every three They had no preceding risk factors.
The same occurs in the ICUs, where 56% of the minors admitted for flu had no previous pathologies. Given these data, “children must be vaccinated”, first of all to protect them, and then their environment, which may be full of vulnerable people, such as their grandparents, and who also have to protect themselves with a puncture.
2023-09-27 18:46:32
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