A once-dreaded deadly childhood infection that many doctors have never actually seen is starting to edge back into view, NBC News reports. Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, was a leading cause of meningitis and other life-threatening infections in young children before a vaccine arrived in 1987. Before that, about 20,000 kids in the US fell seriously ill from the bacterial ailment each year and roughly 1,000 died. Widespread vaccination cut annual cases to under 50, effectively erasing Hib from most doctors' day-to-day reality.
Now, childhood vaccination rates are slipping, including for Hib, and physicians interviewed by NBC say they're seeing something they haven't in years: new, severe cases. Recent infections—including two meningitis cases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the death of an unvaccinated 4-month-old in Florida, and the death of a vaccinated 8-year-old last year—have specialists warning that Hib could follow measles in staging a comeback. With overall childhood immunization down in most US counties and political battles swirling around vaccine policy, doctors fear a return to spinal taps, crowded pediatric ICUs, and preventable deaths.
"If this was something adults would get, you would see a lot of people panicking," one doctor tells USA Today. Some experts are warning that with cuts to CDC's surveillance and reporting functions, just how prevalent Hib is may not be truly clear. "What's really going on?" says another physician. "This is not a disease you want to come back."
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