Toddler Contracts Infection from Father's Smallpox Vaccine

A 2-year old boy and his both have both contracted a dangerous infection after coming in contact with the boy's father. The father, a US soldier about to be deployed overseas, had recently been vaccinated for smallpox by the Army. Physicians treating the child and his mother say that the infection is stemmed from the father's recent military vaccination.

The boy and mother, whose names are being withheld for privacy, were both being treated in a specially ventilated room at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. Staff members of the hospital were required to wear face masks and gloves, the two had been placed in a special room with negative air pressure, so all air would blow inward. The young boy was being medicated with potent antiviral drug, as well as with an anti-vaccinia agent supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and the experimental drug ST-246, which was untried as a therapy in humans. The boy developed a rash that covered over 80 percent of his body and despite treatments will lose nearly 20 percent of his outer skin layer from the infection.

The physicians stress that neither the boy nor his mother have smallpox. what they are suffering from is a rare infection called eczema vaccinatum, which is related to the vaccinia virus used live in the vaccine to convey the immunity of smallpox. The condition has not been officially reported since at least 1990 when the military ended its previous program of small pox vaccinations. The smallpox vaccination program was restarted in 2002 after fears of bioterrorism, despite smallpox having been declared erradicated in 1980.