Vaccinations

OGDEN -- Some parents who choose not to vaccinate their children are feeling frustrated and angry about the way they were notified of a whooping cough outbreak in a city school last week.

More than 65 Mount Ogden Junior High School students were sent home for being underimmunized or on immunization exemption -- for personal, religious or medical reasons -- on Oct. 24, when one student case of whooping cough was confirmed.

OGDEN -- Unvaccinated Mount Ogden Junior High students will have a longer-than-expected break from school because another student and a school employee have been confirmed as having whooping cough.

Earlier this week, 65 unimmunized Mount Ogden students were sent home for at least five days after the school was notified that one of its students had been diagnosed with whooping cough.

Because of the additional cases, the school is considered to have an outbreak of whooping cough, said Glen Kinney, Weber/Morgan Health Department epidemiologist.

SALT LAKE CITY — Members of the Salt Lake County Council will roll up their sleeves for flu vaccinations during an official meeting.

CLEARFIELD -- Davis County Health officials are reminding residents that the easiest, most reliable way to prevent the spread of flu is to be vaccinated against it.

CENTERVILLE -- Dawson Jensen didn't even wince when stuck in the upper left arm with the Tdap booster immunization.

"A little pinch, and it's done," said 12-year-old Dawson, one of 20 Centerville Junior High School seventh-graders receiving their required immunizations Tuesday at the school. Davis County Health officials were on hand to conduct a 3-hour immunization clinic.

For his bravery, Dawson was to receive a milkshake from a popular hamburger drive-in, said his mother, Jen Jensen, of Farmington.

SOUTH OGDEN -- South Ogden Animal Services presents Shots & Suds from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the South Ogden Animal Shelter, 5466 S. 600 East, South Ogden, behind Pleasant Valley Branch Library off Adams Avenue.

At first, Phil Patterson, 69, thought it was an insect bite he got from working in the yard. But by the next day, he and his wife, Sandra, a retired nurse, knew it was more serious. The one raised, itchy bump had spread into a patch of bumps.

"It was all over the right side of his trunk, front and back," Sandra Patterson, 67, said.

The Newbury Park, Calif., couple soon learned that he was suffering from shingles, a viral infection that causes a painful rash that can flare up in anybody who has ever had chickenpox -- more than 95 percent of the population, according to medical experts.

Although there is a shingles vaccine, approved in 2006 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, only about 10 percent of people who should get it are being vaccinated, according to a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released in late 2010.

The CDC estimates that about 1 million Americans each year develop shingles. The severity varies, but the pain can be so great that it can be life-altering, according to Dr. Bill Schaffner, president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.