Housecall for Health: Chickenpox Vaccine

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some good news about chickenpox: it’s not nearly as deadly as it used to be.  The CDC is touting the benefits of its chickenpox vaccine program after the agency saw a steep decline in deaths.

FOX’s Karlie Pouliot has more in today’s “Housecall for Health”…

In the early 1990’s, chickenpox killed about 105 people annually.  But since the U.S. began vaccinating against the virus in 1995, deaths have fallen to fewer than 20 per year.  The CDC is calling the results “impressive.”  In rare cases, chickenpox can be complicated by bacterial infections, which can cause swelling of the brain and pneumonia.