FLU

Upper Chesapeake Health will hold flu clinics for ages 12 and older. A pediatric flu clinic and follow-up will be held for children ages 6 months to 11 years. FluMist, a nasal vaccine, also will be available. The cost is $20, payable by cash or check. Medicare will be accepted. Cards must be shown. Clinics will be held: Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Ignatius Church, 533 E. Jarrettsville Road, Forest Hill. Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Nov. 15 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, Chesapeake Conference Center.

The bouquet of plastic flowers hanging on Gayle Westmoreland's front door disappears as she swings the door open and steps forward. "Welcome," she says, smiling and offering a well-manicured hand that hovers in midair, awaiting your grasp. Here's where things get awkward. Westmoreland's outstretched arm belies her distaste for shaking hands, a custom she views as unsanitary and intrusive. She feels so strongly about the matter, in fact, that she published a treatise, Hands: Stop Shaking Them!

MOSCOW -- Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin was taken to the Central Clinical Hospital yesterday morning suffering from what his press secretary described as the flu accompanied by a high fever.Dmitri Yakushkin, the Kremlin press secretary, said Yeltsin, 68, had not felt well Friday but refused to go into the hospital until yesterday. Yakushkin said the president would stay in the hospital for at least two days.Yeltsin, now less than a year away from finishing his second four-year term in office, has been in poor health for years.

One minute you feel fine; the next, your head throbs and your muscles and joints ache. You feel hot, then cold. Weak and dazed, you can only burrow in bed and cough and sneeze and sniffle for the 10 days it takes for the virus to run its course.Influenza strikes fast and hits hard.After it does, there's little any doctor can do to help. That is, until now.Last month marked the debut of a new prescription drug called Relenza. Relenza has been shown to shorten the duration of the flu by an average of 1 1/2 days.

In "As Good as It Gets," Jack Nicholson portrays Melvin, a germophobe whose medicine cabinet is stocked wall-to-wall with bars of soap. When washing his hands, Melvin opens a box, lathers up, then tosses out the barely used bar.But the compulsive behavior continues. He immediately grabs another fresh bar of soap, lathers up again, and throws that bar out, too.OK, Melvin's crackers, but he has the right idea when it comes to effective germ-killing. It's not so much the whole body as it is the hands -- especially nowadays as flu and cold run rampant.

No needle, no tears. A nasal-spray vaccine to protect children against the flu and painful middle-ear infections is showing great promise in a five-year National Institute of Health study being conducted around the country.In the first three years, the vaccine has been 93 percent effective in preventing flu and 98 percent effective against influenza-associated ear infections in children.Researchers are trying to determine whether widespread immunization of children 18 months to 18 years old will provide communitywide protection against influenza.

The last flu clinic of the year sponsored by Action for Community Enrichment [ACE] will be held between 9 a.m. and noon Wednesday at Waxter Senior Center, 1000 Cathedral St., downtown.ACE has scheduled the flu shots in conjunction with the city Health Department. The threat of flu is at its peak between December and April.The shots are free to anyone 65 years or older who has Medicare "part B" insurance. Others receiving a flu shot will be asked for a donation. Information: Dorene Holloman, 410-396-1273.

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Duane Simpkins collapsed on the court in the closing seconds of Maryland's 82-69 victory over Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament yesterday, but said later he would play in today's semifinal round against Georgia Tech.The senior point guard said he has been fighting the flu, and had a fever when he arrived in Greensboro on Wednesday. He had not practiced with the team the previous two days because of his illness.Simpkins said he grew dizzy and "was trying to signal somebody help me off the court" when Keith Booth went to the foul line for two free throws with 20 seconds left.

Mount St. Mary's basketball coach Jim Phelan will be on the bench Saturday night when the team launches its Northeast Conference schedule against Long Island at Knott Arena.Phelan, 66, missed Saturday's 100-75 defeat at Tulane after going to the emergency room of a New Orleans hospital for what was diagnosed as flu and dehydration."I knew when he left for the bus to go down there he had the flu and wasn't feeling well," said Phelan's wife, Dottie. "But he's feeling better now, although he's not completely himself.

A LOT of us have gotten the flu this year. However, most of us suffered through it with nothing more than temporary pains, fevers and coughs.It was nothing like the flu and pneumonia that swept the country in 1918. Baltimore was second only to Philadelphia in the number deaths per thousand residents caused by the epidemic.In 1918, 7 out of every 1,000 Baltimoreans who got the flu or pneumonia died -- for a total of 3,742 fatalities; more than 80,000 people died nationally. Baltimore's undertakers were overwhelmed by bodies; many burials had to be delayed for an unacceptably long time.

I'm beginning to think I'd have better luck finding a needle in a haystack. But I'm not looking for just any old needle. I want one loaded with the vaccine that I'm told will guard my asthmatic daughter from developing the swine flu, or H1N1. According to scary media reports, she's a prime candidate for complications of the virus. Based on these vivid accounts of the flu's effects on vulnerable populations, it doesn't take much for me to imagine the stubborn bug burrowing deep down into the recesses of her lungs, causing uncontrollable coughing, labored breathing, and ... well, I don't allow my mind to wander any further than that.

Maryland may receive just half its expected supply of the swine flu vaccine for October, state health officials said Monday as they scrambled, along with hospitals and other providers, to confront a projected shortfall. As H1N1-related hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise, people have flocked to health department clinics to get inoculated, waiting in lines that stretched several hours. Meanwhile, in Baltimore County, officials have canceled several clinics because of a lack of vaccine.

WASHINGTON - -An analysis in 10 states of people hospitalized with the pandemic strain of H1N1 influenza shows that asthma is by far the most common underlying condition associated with severe cases of the disease. In children, other much rarer chronic conditions, such as sickle cell anemia, cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy, are also predisposing patients to life-threatening bouts of the virus, federal health officials said. Epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the experience of about 1,400 people older than 18, and 500 children, who had been hospitalized in 10 states since the new influenza strain emerged in April.

On one of his last days of summer vacation, Hunter Sears would have preferred to still be in bed at 10 a.m., or maybe just settling in for a few good hours of television. So why, exactly, was the 13-year-old Anne Arundel County boy sitting in his Annapolis pediatrician's office yesterday, his orange T-shirt rolled up to his shoulder as a nurse first took blood from his arm and then gave him a shot he didn't need to get? Hunter was pediatric volunteer No.1 of an expected 600 nationwide for an experimental vaccine against the H1N1 influenza virus, a new strain of flu that appeared in April and which officials fear will be widespread come fall.

In anticipation of a mass vaccination campaign against swine flu this fall, Maryland health officials are communicating with doctors' offices, clinics and hospitals about the details of administering a vaccine to nearly 3 million of the state's most vulnerable residents. Providers who plan to administer the vaccine should begin signing up at the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Web site, www.dhmh.state.md.us. Officials created an online database Friday to take requests from family doctors' offices, clinics and hospitals that would likely give the inoculations.

In a race to stave off an unusually dangerous flu season, scientists at the University of Maryland and seven other universities in the U.S. will begin testing a swine flu vaccine in adults and children within the next few weeks - the first step in what could be a mass vaccination campaign. The trials, which will test the vaccines of two manufacturers, mark the launch of an aggressive government timetable to have inoculations ready for as many as 200 million Americans, including 2 million Marylanders, by mid-October.

When Gov. Martin O'Malley shuttered five schools in Maryland last week after the discovery of several suspected cases of the swine flu, the closures seemed prudent given how little was known about the virulence of the disease and its ability to spread. Most of what we did know was ominous: It was a strain that had never appeared before in humans, it struck healthy, young adults, it appeared nearly simultaneously in countries around the world, and it was already responsible for more than 20 deaths in Mexico and one in the United States.

Midshipman suspected of having meningitis dies A first-year student at the Naval Academy died last night at University of Maryland Medical Center after he was hospitalized last week for a suspected case of bacterial meningitis, an academy spokeswoman said. The 20-year-old's name is being withheld pending family notification. The midshipman became ill Wednesday at Bancroft Hall and was taken to Baltimore Washington Medical Center for initial treatment. As a precaution, 44 midshipmen, staff members and first responders who had close contact with the student have been taking antibiotics and are being monitored by medical staff.

You see games like this, and you wonder how they're as close to .500 as they are. Then you remember - wow, they are. The Orioles caught the Sunday Flu again yesterday - either that, or the Overmatched Rotation Flu, or the Busted Bullpen Flu. Or, for a nice change of pace, the Sun in the Eyes Flu. Actually, this time it was all of the above, plus an unwelcome case of the Texas Rangers remembering how thunderous their bats can be. The result at Camden Yards...

GOLDEN OLDIES The 1958 Maryland team, the first Atlantic Coast Conference team outside the state of North Carolina to win the league's postseason tournament, was honored at halftime of yesterday's game. Twelve of the team's surviving members, as well as coach Bud Millikan, took part in the ceremony. FLU BUG CATCHES UP Freshman swingman Cliff Tucker missed the game with the flu. Tucker was the first player sidelined by the worst flu outbreak to hit the College Park campus in more than 10 years.