Chickenpox

A common childhood disease characterized by a fever followed by itchy raw pox or open sores. It is rarely fatal, usually from associated pnuemonia?. Chicken pox has a two week incubation period and is highly contagious by air transmission two days before symptoms appear. Therefore chicken pox spreads quickly through schools and other places of close contact. As the disease is more severe if contracted as an adult, parents have been known to insure that their children became infected before adulthood.

As an adult virus remaining in the nerves can develop into the painful diease, shingles?. A chicken pox vaccine is now available.