Deaths of young, healthy children baffle scientists

“Why would younger individuals, otherwise healthy, succumb to this virus? That, in the experience we have generally with other viruses, rarely, rarely happens.”

Anthony Fauci

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Washington Post

JETERSVILLE, Va. — On Oct. 7, 6-year-old Heaven Skyler Wilson dragged herself off the school bus that dropped her in front of her home on a rural road in Jetersville, just south of Richmond. The little girl, who had never had so much as an ear infection in her life, was pale and feverish and complained of an upset stomach.

The next day, Heaven’s grandmother, Pat Sparrow, took her to a nearby clinic. Heaven, usually a bright, bubbly girl with blond pigtails, dimples and effusive energy, had a sore throat and a 103-degree temperature. The doctor swabbed her for the flu, and the test was positive.

It was just something going around, Sparrow said she was told. The doctor told Sparrow to take Heaven home, give her Tylenol and chicken broth, and let her rest.

By the next morning, Heaven couldn’t breathe. Sparrow called 911.

“How does she sound?” Sparrow said the dispatcher calmly asked.

Sparrow’s panicked husband held the phone to the child’s heaving lungs. “This is how she’s breathing! Will you get here now?”

He scooped the child in his arms and rushed across the lawn to meet the ambulance. By the time they arrived at Chippenham Hospital in Richmond about 30 minutes later, Heaven’s face was blue. Emergency-room doctors intubated her and put her on a respirator.

Two weeks later, on Oct. 21, ravaged with double pneumonia and a staph infection that deprived her brain of oxygen, Heaven was disconnected from the respirator. She lived for four minutes.

At 11:18 p.m., Heaven died in the arms of her mother, Sara Wilson. “You never heard such an awful scream from someone who loved her child so much,” Sparrow said, her voice shaking.

This year’s swine flu is, by official standards, a “mild to moderate” pandemic. As in every year, with every seasonal flu, people get sick. Some are hospitalized. And some die. But it is the seemingly random deaths of healthy, young people such as Heaven that are driving much of the fear around swine flu.

With seasonal flu, 90 percent of the people who die are older than 65; most of those victims are older than 85. The worst outbreaks of seasonal flu are usually reported in nursing homes. But with this year’s H1N1 strain, the demographics are reversed. Now, most of those dying are younger than 65, the worst outbreaks are in schools and the highest hospitalization rate is among children younger than 4.

Forty to 150 children die from the seasonal flu every year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said that it had vastly underestimated the number of children who have died from swine flu. The number of pediatric deaths had previously been reported to be 129. Now, the government estimates that 300 to 800 children died between April 1 and Oct. 17. During that period, 14 million to 34 million Americans came down with swine flu, the CDC said.

Nationwide, about one-third of the children who have died were, like Heaven, otherwise healthy, CDC officials and other reports said.

Heaven was the first and only confirmed H1N1 victim in Virginia to die despite having no underlying complications or health condition. Of the 27 Virginia swine-flu victims who have died since April, three have been children.

The mystery over a relative handful of cases is fueling anxiety about the scarcity of vaccine, jamming switchboards at pediatricians’ offices and sending concerned parents to overflowing health clinics. (That eagerness to get the vaccine is, however, a minority phenomenon: In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, more than six in 10 of those surveyed said they will not get vaccinated, and only 52 percent of parents planned to have their children vaccinated.)

Scientists are at a loss to explain why perfectly healthy young people might die from the flu.

“Why would younger individuals, otherwise healthy, succumb to this virus?” asked Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “That, in the experience we have generally with other viruses, rarely, rarely happens. We don’t know the answer to that. But that is the thing that scares parents, understandably.”