Flu Season Brings Deaths, School Closures

March 2, 2009— -- In Maryland, a 13-year-old boy dies after a brief but violent battle with what doctors believe is influenza. A week later, a school in Virginia shuts down for a day when nearly 200 of its students are absent due to sickness.

The headlines make it impossible to deny that we are in the middle of the flu season. And infectious disease experts say that similar stories could be in store for the weeks to come.

The flu season, during which the disease is most rampant, is generally thought to run from November through April. According to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the influenza virus sends more than 200,000 Americans to the hospital every year. And each year, more than 36,000 people die from the flu and its complications.

Most vulnerable are the elderly, infants and those with conditions that cause their immune systems to be compromised. But even young, healthy individuals can die from a severe infection.

Such was the case with 13-year-old Ian Willis of Frederick, Md. Ian's father, Robert Willis, said that on Feb. 13, Ian woke up and said he was not feeling well.

Ian's mother, Michelle Willis, took the boy's temperature, but after finding that he did not have a fever she let him go to school. Later that afternoon, Ian said he still felt under the weather; yet after downing a foot-long Subway sandwich, he spent the evening playing video games with friends.

On Saturday, he began having a fever. And on Sunday, his condition got worse.

"We noticed a change in his color," Willis said, adding that the boy appeared to be having trouble breathing. Willis rushed his son to Frederick Memorial Hospital, where doctors determined that the boy was going into respiratory distress.

In a sequence of events that Willis now describes as a "rollercoaster," doctors at Frederick Memorial administered life-saving treatment before transferring Ian to Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C., where more treatments were needed.

On Feb. 19, Ian passed away.

"We've tried to rehash this in our minds," Willis said. "We've seen the posters in the doctor's office -- 'If you have these symptoms, you have the flu. Get fluids and rest.'

"By the time we noticed he had trouble breathing, it was less than four to five hours before he was in critical condition in the hospital."

Ian is not the only casualty of the flu season thus far. According to the weekly flu report by the CDC, his death was just one of eight flu-associated deaths among children reported so far in the week ending Feb. 21.