WASHINGTON - Vaccines are not just for children, but far too few adults are rolling up their sleeves, federal health officials reported yesterday.
The numbers of newly vaccinated adults are surprisingly low, considering how much public attention a trio of new shots - which protect against shingles, whooping cough, and cervical cancer - received in recent years.
A survey by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases indicated that aside from the flu, most adults have trouble even naming diseases that they could prevent with a simple inoculation.
"We really need to get beyond the mentality that vaccines are for kids. Vaccines are for everybody," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new CDC report found:
Only about 2 percent of Americans age 60 and older received a vaccine against shingles in its first year of sales.
There are more than 1 million new cases a year of shingles, an excruciating rite of aging that causes a blistering skin rash. As many as 200,000 shingles sufferers develop a complication, severe nerve pain that can last for months or even years. Anyone who has ever had chickenpox is at risk, especially after age 60, because the chickenpox virus hibernates for decades in nerve cells until erupting again.
The shingles vaccine,
About 2 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 got a booster shot against whooping cough in the two years since it hit the market.
The cough is making a big comeback because the vaccine given to babies and toddlers starts wearing off by adolescence. Older patients usually recover, but whooping cough can cause weeks of misery. They can spread the illness to not-yet-vaccinated infants, who can die from the bacterial infection, also called pertussis.
The pertussis booster was added to another long-recommended shot, a booster against tetanus and diphtheria that adults should get every 10 years. The new triple combination is called Tdap. Sanofi-Aventis's Adacel brand is for ages 11 to 64. There also is a version for 10- to 18-year-olds,
About 10 percent of women ages 18 to 26 have received at least one dose of a three-shot series of a vaccine, Merck's Gardasil, that protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes cervical cancer.
