An important reason why some parents refuse to have their children vaccinated is that many of the vaccines routinely given are to prevent diseases no longer seen in this country. Here’s what you should know: 1. Parents who refuse vaccinations for any reason are making a big mistake. The reason that these diseases are no [...]

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Polio in Russia.  Measles in France. E. coli in Germany. Diseases that are particularly harmful to children. Diseases that you thought you would no longer hear much about are popping up in countries where you least expect to find them. Health-wise, is foreign travel become more hazardous?   1. On the contrary. Foreign travel is [...]

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Caution: travel is hazardous for children who are not fully immunized. And it doesn’t matter who is doing the traveling – your child or perfect strangers. • Example: Last month, a woman with a communicable case of measles traveled by air from London to New Mexico, stopping at airports in Baltimore, Denver, and Albuquerque. Similar [...]

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Are your children’s vaccinations up-to-date before traveling by air? According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in the past year alone there were more than 3,000 known airline passengers traveling while ill with a contagious disease.   1. The aircraft cabin environment abets the spread of disease-causing microorganisms. Infected passengers cough up, sneeze out [...]

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Several weeks ago, on Halloween evening, an eerie event interrupted the basketball game between the San Antonio Spurs, the home team, and the Sacramento Kings. A bat, the flying kind, fluttered about just above the playing floor, probably brought into the arena by a fan, as a (not-so-funny) Halloween prank.   A Spurs player, Manu [...]

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Quarantines* and other restrictions on international travel do little to limit the spread of disease, in this case, H1N1flu, when the disease already exists in most countries, says World Health Organization. Nevertheless, public health authorities in some countries, mostly in the Middle East and Asia, are monitoring arriving travelers for symptoms suggestive of H1N1 and [...]

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The more you know about H1N1 (swine) influenza the better you can protect your children from the disease and treat them effectively should they become ill.  Even the experts do not have all the answers. This is a new virus, one never seen before. Ongoing worldwide surveillance indicates that H1N1 is presently (mid September) less [...]

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Hollywood actress Salma Hayek’s widely publicized act of breastfeeding a local child on her recent visit to Sierra Leone, Africa was a powerful and heartwarming humanitarian act, one that will go far to publicize the atrocious conditions of children in this, the world’s poorest country, and in other poor countries. However, her act of compassion [...]

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