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Report: Soldier vaccination infects child

CHICAGO — A 2-year-old Indiana boy is under treatment in a specially ventilated Chicago hospital room after developing a rare and life-threatening infection from his soldier father’s smallpox vaccination, according to a published report.

Doctors at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital said the boy’s mother is also infected, but much less seriously than her son, who had a virulent rash over 80 percent of his body earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune reported in March 17 editions.

The family’s name and home town are not being released at their request.

Physicians stressed that the boy is not suffering from smallpox, but from the related vaccinia virus which is used to convey immunity to the much deadlier disease. They said the infection is a rare condition called eczema vaccinatum, which has not reported since at least 1990, when the military ended a previous program of smallpox vaccination. The dread disease had been declared eradicated in 1980.

A new round of smallpox began in 2002 because of bioterrorism fears, and the military has vaccinated 1.2 million of its personnel to date.

Authorities said the boy’s father received the vaccination in late January before a planned deployment overseas, but the Army delayed his departure and allowed him to visit his family in Indiana in mid-February.

Two weeks later, the boy developed a severe rash. He was first taken to St. Catherine’s Hospital in East Chicago, Ind., and then transferred to the U. of C. facility on March 3.

Doctors said the child suffered from eczema, which is a known risk factor for vaccinia infection, and noted that official guidelines warn people with eczema not to have close physical contact with the recently vaccinated because the condition allows the virus to enter the skin.

“We are looking into how this could have happened,” Army spokesman Paul Boyce told the newspaper.

The Defense Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been in daily contact with the hospital about the case, as have state and local health authorities. They have said, though, that there is no infection risk for the general population, because the vaccinia virus can be spread only through close physical contact.

Nonetheless, Dr. Madelyn Kahana, the U. of C.’s chief of pediatric intensive care, said the hospital was taking extraordinary measures to prevent any possible spread of the virus. She said all staff members dealing with the boy and his mother were wearing face masks and gloves, and that the two had been placed in a special room with negative air pressure, so all air would blow inward.

Kahana said the boy had been treated with a potent antiviral drug, as well as with an anti-vaccinia agent supplied by the CDC and the experimental drug ST-246, which was untried as a therapy in humans.

She said the boy appeared to be improving this week but will probably lose 20 percent of his outer skin layer.