Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Miami Herald - Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Daniel Chang, dchang@herald.com
A study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported the U.S. toll for flu-related deaths increased from 16,263 in 1976-77 to 64,684 in 1998-99.
Flu deaths average about 36,000 a year, up from 20,000 in previous estimates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with people 65 and older accounting for the majority of those deaths.
In Florida, where influenza and pneumonia are usually grouped together, the state's Department of Health cataloged 3,290 deaths from the two in 2001. Of these, only 13 people actually died from influenza.
Across the country, influenza now claims more lives each year than AIDS, researchers say.
South Florida reflects the national trend. Miami-Dade County saw 960 people die of AIDS-related illnesses and 1,027 succumb to influenza in 1998 and 1999. In Broward County, 425 people died of AIDS-related illnesses while 668 were felled by influenza during the same years.
Dr. James Cresanta, a preventive-medicine physician with the Broward County Health Department, said the recent report indicates a need for more stringent measures against influenza.
"We need better vaccines," Cresanta said. "We need a better production and distribution system and we need to convince a higher segment of the public that they need to get vaccinated."
The findings also were surprising.
"We seem to have underestimated how much death there is from influenza and other viral-related diseases like that," Cresanta said. "The protective methods we currently have aren't ideal."
While drug breakthroughs in the mid-1990s helped tame AIDS and reduce the U.S. death toll from 51,000 in 1995 to about 15,000 in 2001, the main weapon doctors have against flu -- a vaccine -- has proved disappointingly ineffective in the most vulnerable population, people 65 and older.
Despite the development of a flu vaccine nearly 40 years ago, only about 65 percent of people 65 and older get flu shots each year.
Annual flu shots have been recommended for people 65 and older since the 1960s and for those 50 and older since 2000.
Vaccination rates among people with high-risk conditions such as diabetes or heart disease are even lower, about 30 percent, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, a CDC epidemiologist and coauthor of the study.
This report was supplemented with information from The Associated Press.
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