Emily Lastinger came home from preschool on a Wednesday and fell asleep. An after-school nap was so unusual for the perky 3 1/2-year-old that her parents called the pediatrician.
The next day, the doctor told Joe and Jennifer Lastinger, who was nine months pregnant with the couples' fourth child, that Emily had the flu. The couple, of Grapevine, Texas, weren't especially concerned. "We were like most people we knew," Joe says. "The flu? Neither of us worried much about it."
Four days later, on Feb. 2, 2004, they left her alone in their bed for a few minutes. Jennifer returned to find her strangely still. Emily had stopped breathing. Doctors tried for 12 hours to resuscitate her. The hospital record reads: "At 22:45, examination revealed cardiac standstill. She died in the arms of her father. Cause of death, influenza A."
"Reading that still makes me cry," Joe says.
Emily's death is all the more tragic, he says, because a flu shot could have saved her. "At the time, they didn't recommend a flu shot for healthy kids like Emily," he says.
That changed this year, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended flu shots for the 30 million kids from 6 months through 18 years, bringing the number of people who should get vaccine to 261 million, or 84% of the U.S. population. Last week, the Lastingers and other grieving families, members of Families Fighting Flu (familiesfightingflu.org), became pioneers in a new-media campaign they hope will prompt parents to safeguard their children.
They've told their story in a brief documentary, Why Flu Vaccination Matters: Personal Stories From Families Affected by Influenza, which went live Tuesday on YouTube. The video is one component of a broader CDC effort to fight a virus with the viral spread of public-health information on the Internet.
The CDC has hosted a Web seminar to encourage "mommy bloggers" to "spread the word, not the flu." The agency has created flu e-cards that visitors to www.CDC.gov can send to friends, urging them to get vaccinated, flu badges for members of social networks such as MySpace to post on their profiles, and "Get Vaccinated" website buttons that allow visitors to go to the CDC's flu page.
"This is new territory for us," says Kristine Sheedy, director of communications for the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The CDC's goal is to shrink the death toll from the flu, which kills about 36,000 people a year, roughly 100 of them children. That's not counting 200,000 hospitalizations a year, 20,000 of them among children.
In addition to kids 6 months through 18 years old, the CDC recommends vaccinations for people 50 and older; pregnant women, patients with immune system problems or chronic diseases; nursing-home residents; health workers; household contacts of people with chronic diseases, and household contacts of children younger than 5, especially those younger than 6 months.
The challenge is getting so many people to roll up their sleeves before flu season begins to peak in January or February. Just over one-third of adults ages 50 to 64, 66% of seniors 65 and older, 13% of pregnant women and 42% of health-care workers get shots each year, the CDC says. Health workers are vital because they can infect patients who lack the defenses to battle back from the flu.
"We've got a long way to go to get our vaccination rate up," CDC director Julie Gerberding told reporters at a session on flu vaccination last week sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. She leveled pointed criticism at health workers who fail to get vaccinated, noting that her remarks reflect her opinion, not government policy.
"It is unconscionable for health workers not to get vaccinated," Gerberding said. "They should be required to sign (a waiver) if they choose not to get vaccinated. This is a patient-safety issue."
Some states and medical facilities are thinking of toughening requirements, though most favor persuasion over a mandate, says Vanderbilt's William Schaffner, president-elect of NFID.
Joe Lastinger says he can't help but worry about low vaccination rates, especially among health workers.
That's because Anna, who was born just after Emily died, was diagnosed with leukemia. She's midway through a 2 1/2-year course of chemotherapy, which left her defenseless against the flu.
"Can you imagine her being hospitalized and contracting influenza from a person who's taking care of her?" he asks.
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
??? Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.