From the NationalPost.com

TORONTO — Ontario’s publicly funded chickenpox vaccination program appears to have dramatically reduced the number of children who get infected with the virus, researchers say.

In a study that looked at 20 years of data, Public Health Ontario found the number of children who visited a doctor or an emergency room due to chickenpox dropped 71 per cent after the public immunization program began in 2004, compared to two earlier periods. Hospitalizations also fell 59 per cent.

The study looked at health-care usage related to chickenpox among kids under 18 from 2004 to 2011. The numbers were compared to the period from 1992 to 1998, when there was no vaccine, and 1999 to 2003, when the shot was available but had to be paid for out of parents’ pockets.

“This is a vaccine program that very clearly is working,” said lead author Dr. Anne Wormsbecker, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at Public Health Ontario.

“So it looks like from our study that kids are not getting as much chickenpox … and fewer kids are being hospitalized for complications of chickenpox.

“So that’s really a good news story.”

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