Young Hockey Player’s Death A Flu Warning
Jan 22, 2018

By Amy Pisani, Executive Director of Every Child By Two/Vaccinate Your Family

Each of us has a tipping point; the moment when a news story becomes personal, more impactful and perhaps spurs action.

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Every Child By Two Executive Director, Amy Pisani, with her son Nicholas, a fellow hockey player from CT.

After hearing of the tragic death of 10-year-old Nico Mallozzi, an ice hockey player from a neighboring town who died Sunday from complications related to flu, I immediately reached out to our hockey league president to ask him to urge our teams to implement the same flu protocol that Nico’s team is now doing: Stay home if you have symptoms of influenza, don’t share water bottles and shake hands post game with gloves on. Thursday evening our league distributed Nico Mallozzi # 7 memorial stickers for every player’s helmet.

According to friends and family writing online, Nico was a sweet, happy, healthy child from New Canaan, CT. He had traveled to upstate New York to cheer on his team during a hockey tournament in which he did not participate because he was feeling sick.  Nico was hospitalized on his way home and died the same day, reportedly from influenza and its complications.

As the executive director of Every Child By Two, a national non-profit organization whose mission is to ensure that all families are protected from vaccine-preventable diseases, it saddens me to learn of yet another family suffering the devastating loss of a child. As a fellow hockey mom, this tragedy resonates deeply.  Anyone with a child on a team knows that hockey families are a tight group. From fall to early spring, we travel the region at all hours of the day and night in support of our children. We cherish our children’s teammates, who we watch grow up from wobbly “learn to skaters” to dedicated players who often commit five or six days a week to practice and playing games, building lifelong friendships.

Nico’s tragic death is a poignant reminder that children of any age, even those who are healthy and athletic, can be taken by flu in a heartbeat. 

Each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns us that approximately 100 children will die from influenza every season. Sadly, as of last week, here in the U.S. there have already been 30 children who died from flu so far this season, and this number will continue to climb, as we are nowhere near the end of this outbreak. Unfortunately, these kinds of statistics don’t always resonate with the public and as a result, health advocates are challenged to find ways to spur families to take the time to vaccinate everyone 6 months and older against flu each and every year.

To make matters worse, there are mixed messages about the effectiveness of influenza vaccines and getting across the idea that some protection from the vaccine is better than none is often difficult. As with any infectious disease, community prevention is of paramount importance. Since no vaccine is 100 percent effective and not everyone is able to be vaccinated due to age or underlying medical conditions, we must provide a barrier around one another to keep diseases from taking the lives of children like Nico.

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It’s not too late to get a flu shot for yourself and your family.

While the peak of flu activity varies from year to year, it often occurs between December and February, and can last as long as until May. Although 12,000 to 56,000 people die each season, influenza vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk of flu-associated death by 65 percent among healthy children and by 51 percent among children with underlying high-risk medical conditions. Other research indicates that adults benefit from repeated flu vaccination year after year. The study found flu vaccination was 74 percent effective in preventing intensive care unit admissions in older individuals and 70 percent effective in preventing deaths among older adults.

These statistics matter and they all say the same thing; protect your entire family from flu by getting vaccinated against this potentially deadly disease every year.

For more information on this year’s flu season, visit:

 


This editorial was originally published in the Hartford Courant.

 


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