The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms a shortage of flu vaccine in some locations in the country. The agency’s director, Julie Gerberding, said the government is taking steps to redistribute vaccine supplies from places where surpluses exist.

Listen (NPR)

Some public health officials are advocating mandatory influenza vaccination of healthcare workers, because current vaccination rates are so low and the potential benefits to patients so high. In 2003, vaccination rates among healthcare workers averaged only about 40 percent.

Read (Reuters)

My wife, who’s a public health nurse, received her “mandatory” flu shot last week.

A first-trimester screening test can reliably identify fetuses likely to be born with Down syndrome, providing expectant women with that information much earlier in a pregnancy than current testing allows, according to a major study being released today, 11/09.

The first-trimester approach identified 87 percent of Down babies when used at 11 weeks, whereas the later quadruple test identified 81 percent. The two tests together picked up 95 percent of cases. Both produced false positives in about 5 percent of cases.

Read (Washington Post)

When my wife was pregnant with each of our 3 children, we told the doctor that we didn’t want to know the results of the Down Syndrome test, because the results would not have changed our decision about having the children, and it would have just added stress to the pregnancies.