Families Want Flu Guidelines Changed After Children's Deaths

Jan. 19, 2006 — -- Alissa and Richard Kanowitz's firstborn, Amanda, was a happy, smart and precocious girl. She was also always healthy, so when the 4-year-old came home from school one Friday feeling under the weather, her parents weren't terribly concerned.

"Saturday morning, Amanda woke up with a cough. She had a slight fever, 101," Alissa Kanowitz said. "It seemed like a normal run-of-the-mill flu."

When the Kanowitzes called the doctor, they were told to make sure Amanda stayed hydrated and she would be fine in a few days.

But at 7 a.m. Sunday, Alissa Kanowitz found her daughter dead in her room.

"With Amanda, they believe it was her immune reaction to the flu that actually killed her," Alissa Kanowitz said. "Right now, there's no way to tell who is at risk for reactions like this. So you never know."

A recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine said 153 children died from the flu during the 2003-04 flu season. Of those children, 96 percent were younger than 5, and 63 percent were younger than 3.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends flu vaccine shots for children between the ages of 6 months and 23 months.

The Kanowitzes are part of a group called Families Fighting Flu that wants the CDC to extend the recommendation to all children.

Amanda had not been vaccinated against the flu when she died. Neither had 3-year-old Emily Lastinger.

"She was our first girl, and that was magic to me," Jen Lastinger said. "She was so perfect."

The Lastingers were about to take Emily to the doctor for the second time since she had come down with the flu when they found her lifeless body and called 911.

"The cause of death was the influenza and then she had a secondary bacterial infection, a bacterial pneumonia infection," Joe Lastinger said. "Do we believe that had we had her vaccinated that that would have changed the outcome? Absolutely."

"I feel like our whole life is just a wish now," Jen Lastinger added. "I spend a lot of time wishing things were different."

The CDC doesn't currently discourage parents from vaccinating their children, but says the priority to the vaccine must go to those at the greatest risk -- the very old, the very young, and those with compromised immune systems. That said, an influential CDC advisory panel is meeting in February to review the issue.

"I think that the CDC would want all children to get the vaccine," said Dennis Clements, chief medical officer at Duke Children's Hospital. "If it's affordable and you can do it, I would certainly recommend that all children be vaccinated and, in fact, I did so with my own."