- ATLANTA (Reuters) - A U.S.
soldier who was recently vaccinated against smallpox has died from a heart
attack, the third death among those participating in the federal campaign
to inoculate hundreds of thousands of military personnel and health care
workers.
-
- A Department of Defense official said on Friday that
the 55-year-old National Guardsman had died in an unidentified U.S. military
hospital on March 26, six days after receiving his smallpox vaccination.
-
- Two female health care workers who were recently vaccinated
against smallpox have died in the past week of heart attacks.
-
- Col. John Grabenstein, scientific director for the Pentagon's
smallpox vaccination program, said the deceased soldier was being treated
for high cholesterol and was a smoker at the time he received his smallpox
jab.
-
- "We are categorizing this event at the moment as
unlikely to be due to smallpox vaccination," Grabenstein said during
a conference call with other smallpox vaccination experts and government
immunization experts.
-
- "We are not finished with our evaluation,"
said Grabenstein, who noted that more than 350,000 soldiers had received
smallpox shots since late last year when President Bush authorized the
vaccination program.
-
- The soldier's death, however, occurred amid growing scrutiny
of the campaign. There have been more than a dozen other cases of heart-related
complications in U.S. soldiers and health care workers who received the
vaccine.
-
- The possibility of a link between the deaths and the
vaccine prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to
recommend this week that people with heart disease not be vaccinated until
further notice.
-
- Earlier this month, top U.S. health officials had said
that reports of side-effects linked to the current smallpox program were
overblown. Smallpox kills about 30 percent of its victims and scars the
remainder for life. It was eradicated in 1979.
-
- The United States stopped routine smallpox vaccinations
in 1972, but decided to resume them for select groups last year as fears
grew that the virus could be used as a weapon by radical groups or countries
like Iraq.
-
- When administered in the past the vaccine killed between
one to two out of every million people inoculated and caused others to
suffer brain damage. But it has never before been linked to heart problems.
|
