| Parents, officials struggle over right to refuse vaccines
Marie Hansen of Spanish Fork says something changed the day she took her son Dylan to his 1-year-old doctor's appointment. Until then, Dylan had been successfully overcoming developmental problems caused by his low birth weight. But when he got his MMR and chicken pox immunization shots, he started crying uncontrollably and stopped breathing regularly. Doctors and nurses were eventually able to stabilize him, but Hansen says she never learned exactly what happened. She assumes it was a seizure, but all she really knows is that she soon realized something was wrong. "He just seemed really off the next week," Hansen said. "He didn't really run a fever or anything, he was just off. The best way I can describe it is that he kind of lost the spark in his eye. I can show you pictures and it's just night and day." Hansen is among a small but growing number of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, and according to the medical community, consequently increase the population's risk of disease.
Asthma education brochures aimed at minorities miss the mark in Wisconsin
A Wisconsin study found that take-home educational materials designed for the state's minority children with asthma do not adequately address the cultural and linguistic issues unique to racial/ethnic minority groups. The study evaluated the educational pamphlets using a tool created by the Wisconsin Asthma Coalition, a group of administrators, researchers and health care professionals. The researchers analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the language, visuals, depictions of cultural attitudes and medical provider practices. "This is a first of its kind. No one has developed a tool to gauge the cultural competence of asthma education materials," said lead study author Jane Brotanek, M.D. "It may serve as a model for other states." The study appears in the autumn issue of the journal Ethnicity & Disease .
How To Beat The Flu Virus
SOME people call it the tenner test - the unscientific way of determining whether you have the flu or a common cold. Imagine you saw a £10 note lying in your garden. If you have a cold you'll go and retrieve it, but if you have the flu you'll say 'stuff it' and leave it lying there. Because if sniffing and sneezing characterise a common cold, bone-shaking shivers, pounding headaches and excruciating tiredness signify the flu. The cosy option of snuggling in front of the TV is not an option when the flu virus is coursing through your veins leaving you too ill to move and exhausted after waves of hot fever and cold trembles. Only those who have truly suffered the flu understand its debilitating effects - and they hope the rest of us never experience it.
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