Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffChickenpox was once considered a rite of passage for most children. Before the vaccine became available, about 4 million children in the Unites States contracted chickenpox each year, and nearly 11,000 people were hospitalized and about 100 people died each year from chickenpox infections. Thanks to the vaccine, the number of cases and hospitalizations is down dramatically.
However, when chickenpox does occur, it's highly contagious among people who aren't immune. Most people think of chickenpox as a mild disease — and, for most, it is. But, there's no way to know which infected child or adult will develop a severe case.
Fortunately, the chickenpox vaccine is a safe, effective way to prevent chickenpox and its possible complications.
