Boy Who Caught Smallpox From Dad is Recovering

Apr 08, 10:41 AM

Current Headlines: CHICAGO (AP) -- A 2-year-old Indiana boy who contracted a rare and life-threatening infection from his soldier father's smallpox vaccination is recovering, a hospital spokesman said.

Doctors have relied on some untested measures to save the boy's life, including skin grafts and an experimental drug that has never been used to treat a human patient, officials said. The boy's pox lesions left him with the equivalent of second-degree burns, requiring grafts to let the underlying skin heal.

The boy has been in pediatric intensive care at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital for the past month with a virulent rash over 80 percent of his body.

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