Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Poster Project

My exam may be over, but I am now working on a HUGE poster project for my microbiology class!! Brandi has been helping me and we're making great progress on it!

I chose to do my poster on RSV which is a respiratory virus that primarily effects infants who are born prematurely and spend time in the NICU. I've been very interested in the virus since last year when I learned quite a bit about it while going with Kim to take the Triplets to get their Synagis (RSV vaccine) shots each month for 5 months. I thought I would share some facts with you that I found interesting...

• Those at Risk are primarily premature infants (born before 35 weeks gestation) and multiple births
• RSV Season is each year from November - April, when RSV is most prevalent
• Leading cause of respiratory infection & viral death in children under 5 years old
• There are more than 64 million infections and 160,000 deaths annually from RSV
• Most cases of RSV occur in children between 2-8months old
• Between 51,000 and 82,000 children are hospitalized each year from RSV
• There is no cure for RSV, but there is a vaccine that can be used, however only a select few meet the requirements for the vaccine

That is crazy that so many children are affected by RSV each year and yet, most people have never even heard of the disease. I hope that I am able to educate more people about RSV.