Vaccine Slashes Chickenpox Deaths

U.S. deaths from chickenpox dropped to the lowest level ever after a vaccine to prevent the childhood disease was introduced in 1995, a study shows. In the five years before the vaccine, chickenpox caused or contributed to an average of 145 deaths each year. That dropped to 66 in just a few years, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites). The death rate was slashed by as much as 92 percent in the 1-to-4-year-old group.