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Parents are being encouraged to vaccinate their children against chickenpox to reduce the risk of contracting a drug- resistant superbug.

" You could do the public a huge service in Canada," says Dr. Lee Ford- Jones, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

" If anybody is on the fence about the chickenpox vaccine this might help them realize why those of us in infectious diseases think it's a good idea to get the vaccine, because there won't be 300 [ chickenpox] lesions," if the child is vaccinated...

The original article can be found at: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=16fbf6cd-16cd-4f29-93e1-284aee4215b2

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what we said (Hover the mouse cursor over underlined words for more info)

This story primarily deals with the increasing incidence of MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus), infections in the community where they were rare until quite recently. One quite uncommon way of acquiring the infection is through infected chickenpox lesions. Doctors in this article are advocating vaccinating children against chickenpox as a way of preventing the acquisition of MRSA. Although this is a benefit of vaccination the problem itself is quite rare and there may be more compelling reasons for getting the vaccine. Unfortunately we don't learn a number of important pieces of information in this article such as the overall effectiveness of the vaccine, the percent of the chicken pox lesions that get infected and what percent of infected lesions get infected with MRSA.

In terms of alternatives there is no alternative to preventing chickenpox except avoiding people who are infected. The only way to avoid getting lesions infected if you do get chickenpox is to not scratch at them. Is there anything to prevent you from scratching if you've got chicken pox? hmmm
This story appeared in the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, The Montreal Gazette, and the Ottawa Citizen papers today.

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