Eideard

Vaccinating children aged two to four years against seasonal influenza resulted in a 34% decline in flu-like illnesses, found a study in Canadian Medical Association Journal. Preschool-aged children have influenza infection rates of 25%-43%, higher than other age groups. Vaccinating healthy children can help prevent spread of infection in the home and the community.

In 2006 through 2007, the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices expanded its recommendations to give the seasonal flu vaccine to children beyond the current target group of 6 months to 23 months of age. However, Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization did not, allowing a comparison of vaccination practices between the two countries.

Researchers from the Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and McGill University and the Montreal Public Health Department in Montréal, Quebec evaluated the impact of the expanded US policy on influenza-related visits to the emergency department at the Children’s Hospital Boston compared with Montreal Children’s Hospital. They looked at visits to the emergency department in 2000/2001 through 2008/2009 at the two hospitals…

…The researchers analyzed the visits associated with flu-like illnesses and found that “both hospitals had strong seasonal fluctuations in visits related to influenza-like illness in younger age groups, with more subtle seasonal patterns in older pediatric age groups and similar seasonal epidemic increases, declines and peak timing of the epidemic curve,” write Drs. John Brownstein and Anne Hoen, Children’s Hospital Boston, with coauthors.

“Following the policy change in the United States, we observed a decline in the rate of emergency department visits for influenza-like illness at Children’s Hospital Boston relative to the Montreal Children’s Hospital in the target age group, children two to four years old,” they state.

They also saw declines of 11%-18% in other nontarget age groups (ages 0-1 year, 2-4 years, 5-9 years and 10-18 years), which may be related to an overall reduction of influenza in transmission at home and in the community because of vaccination of two to four year olds…

“…Our findings provide evidence that, in our US study community (i.e., Boston), the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to routinely vaccinate preschool-aged children against seasonal influenza is improving pediatric influenza-related outcomes,” conclude the authors.

Not only seems reasonable; but, overdue. I have no idea why it’s taken either nation so long to get round to this level of vaccnation – but, I’m glad they finally did.

After all, half my North American kinfolk live in the GWN.

Federal US officials are attempting to determine how a stun gun was brought onboard a JetBlue flight that landed at Newark airport in New Jersey.

Crew members at Liberty International Airport found the stun gun tucked into the back of a seat on the plane following the flight from Boston.

The FBI said on Monday that there was no indication the gun, found on Friday, was intended for an attack…

How do you determine the gun wasn’t intended for an attack? Because there wasn’t one?

Members of the airline’s crew were cleaning the JetBlue aircraft at 2220 local time on Friday evening when the gun was discovered…

Authorities said they gave the weapon to the Port Authority of New York, before it was handed over to the Transportation Security Administration, the body responsible for carrying out security screening of passengers.

The TSA can be counted on do as thorough a job at finding who brought it on board – as they did at preventing it from being brought on board. Right?

After a 3-year-old Boston girl complained that her foot hurt, her preschool teacher took off her sneaker and made a startling find: 17 small plastic bags containing crack cocaine.

Police say teachers at the Walnut Grove preschool were adjusting the girl’s sneaker Monday when they found the individually wrapped bags of crack inside a larger plastic bag.

The teachers told police the girl said her mother had put “candy” inside her sneaker. “Where’s my shoe? Mommy’s going to be mad at me,” the girl allegedly told an assistant teacher, according to police.

But the girl’s mother told police she knew nothing about the drugs.

Demare Gary, 19, of Boston, the mother’s boyfriend, was arrested after he allegedly told police the crack was his. Officer Eddy Chrispin said Gary told police he put the crack inside the girl’s sneaker the night before and forgot about it.

The mother was not arrested, but police said the investigation is continuing.

Ain’t nothing like a caring family. At least, not this one.

I hope the wee ‘un survives her childhood.

Not looking too polished for court

A former top official for the US Department of Homeland Security in Boston violated a law she had taken an oath to uphold by encouraging a Brazilian housekeeper who was an illegal immigrant to stay in the country, a federal prosecutor…

Lorraine Henderson — who is suspended without pay from her job as regional director of Homeland Security, Customs, and Border Protection — was caught on a wire worn by her housekeeper, Fabiana Bittencourt, advising Bittencourt not to leave the United States because she would not be let back in, said Assistant US Attorney Diane C. Freniere.

The housekeeper was secretly cooperating with authorities. She had allegedly cleaned Henderson’s Salem condominium for several years, even though a co-worker who had also employed Bittencourt later warned Henderson that the housekeeper was in the country illegally, Freniere said.

“Lorraine Henderson violated the same immigration law that she had taken an oath to uphold,’’ Freniere said in her opening statement to jurors in US District Court in Boston…

The trial is expected to last six to eight days.

When Henderson was arrested on Dec. 5, 2008, prosecutors characterized the case as an extraordinary example of hypocrisy by a law enforcement official who managed 190 armed officers who oversee ports of entry in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Can you possibly imagine that we might have government officials who are hypocrites, who would violate the laws they are charged to protect, who are greedy and selfish enough to ignore their mandate?

I mean – other than Congress.

A luggage handler flew from New York to Boston after falling asleep in the cargo hold of a JetBlue airliner but was unharmed and not charged with any crime.

Massachusetts state police said the 21-year-old man was discovered in the cargo hold when the plane landed at Boston’s Logan Airport on Saturday but provided no further details…

Channel 7 News in Boston reported the man fell asleep with the luggage in New York and that baggage handlers in Boston were shocked to discover him when they opened the cargo door.

Har! I hope he had to pay his own way back home.

Tracey O’Leary’s new police uniform was barely wrinkled when she made her first arrest this week.

The 39-year-old suburban mom, who took a job with the transit police on a lark, arrested a man for indecent assault during her first day on the job.

“It’s exciting,” said O’Leary, who blushed at the media attention her arrest garnered yesterday. “I really helped somebody,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

The arrest came Thursday just under five hours on the job, before O’Leary and her partner, field training officer, Patrolman Tim Ingersoll had even gone to lunch. The pair were above ground in a patrol car when they were dispatched to the Downtown Crossing subway station where a woman told subway personnel she had been groped by another passenger on the Orange Line.

O’Leary said yesterday that the woman, who was irate and not having any of it was very determined to see her assailant arrested. She approached O’Leary directly and told her what happened.

O’Leary said yesterday that after years working in sales and as a stay-at-home mother, she decided to pursue a job in law enforcement. She said she took the civil service exam on a whim with a friend. When an opening came up with the transit police a year and a half later, she took it. O’Leary ended her shift around 2 p.m. Thursday and called her husband of 10 years on her way home to Salem. Her children wanted to know if she used her handcuffs. She did.

Patrolwoman O’Leary – good for you. A welcome addition to the force.