Heath officials say five seventh graders at King-Chavez Prep School have come down with chicken pox. It's the 12th outbreak of the disease this year in San Diego County. KPBS Reporter Kenny Goldberg has more.
Chicken pox is a preventable disease. Doctors recommend children get two doses of chicken pox vaccine: the first at 12 to 15 months of age, and the second between 4 and six.
Karen Waters-Montijo (mahn-TEE-ho) is chief of the County Health Department's immunization branch. She says most kids who get chicken pox recover without problems. But others can become seriously ill.
Karen Waters-Montijo: That's the problem. You can have a perfectly healthy child have a severe complication. So that's why the vaccine was developed, and that's why we recommend that all children get two doses.
Waters-Montijo says there's been a slight increase in the number of local children who haven't received all of their vaccinations.
Kenny Goldberg, KPBS News.
