TAKING CARE OF THE KIDS : MASSIVE INOCULATION PROGRAM BEGINS TODAY ?ASABOUT 9,000 OFFERED SHOTS FOR HEPATITIS.

Byline: Sharline Chiang Daily News Staff Writer

In an unprecedented mass vaccination, public health workers will begin offering shots to about 9,000 children and adults today at 17 Los Angeles schools where they ate strawberry deserts possibly contaminated with hepatitis A.

The first free inoculations will begin at 9 a.m. at three schools - Coldwater Canyon Avenue School in North Hollywood, and Dayton Heights School and Ramona School, both in Los Angeles.

``These schools were chosen to be first, because they were the first schools where the fruit mix was served,'' Los Angeles Unified School District Deputy Superintendent Ruben Zacarias said Wednesday during a news conference.

At the remaining 14 schools, inoculations will be offered Friday, Monday and Tuesday. In the San Fernando Valley, those schools are: Haddon Avenue School in Pacoima, Plummer School in Sepulveda and Strathern Street School in North Hollywood. At Hazeltine Avenue School in Van Nuys, where only a few adults ate the fruit, inoculations will not be offered.

The shots are necessary to prevent the onset of hepatitis A, a highly contagious, but rarely fatal, virus that attacks the liver and causes flulike symptoms.

Students were sent home with notices Wednesday to alert parents that their children might be infected and to urge them to seek inoculations, either from private physicians or school clinics.

At schools that operate on a year-round schedule, however, officials are struggling to reach students who have left for vacation midweek and are still out of town.

On Tuesday, school officials announced that the potentially tainted berries were served at 18 school cafeterias during breakfast and lunch between March 25 and Monday. The fruit, combined in cups with blueberries, originated from the same lot of containers as was sent to Michigan schools where the fruit was linked to 153 cases of hepatitis A.

Thousands of other children in Iowa, Georgia, Arizona and Tennessee also might be at risk because they ate strawberries from the same tainted lot.

In Los Angeles, only those students and adults who were identified by school nurses as having had consumed the cups will be eligible to receive the vaccine - shots of globulin">gamma globulin. Students will not receive shots unless they present parent consent forms, which were sent home Wednesday with children, Zacarias said.

Although some pupils ate the fruit more than a week ago, Los Angeles County's head of disease control insisted that the vaccinations will not come too late.

The vaccines are being administered well within the two-week incubation period before symptoms of hepatitis A begin to appear, said Dr. Shirley Fannin, director of disease control for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

People infected with hepatitis A are not contagious until at least three weeks after contraction, Fannin said.

Zacarias assured that ``the supply will be sufficient and available'' to vaccinate all affected students and staff members.

Public health officials emphasized that only those who ate the cups should undergo the painful injections. Because gamma gobulin injections can cause allergic reactions - rashes and, in rare cases, fever - the less unnecessary recipients the better, they said.

``We want to determine if they were at school that day and if they ate in the cafeteria,'' said Dr. Helen DuPlessis, who heads the LAUSD's Health Department.

In the case of students who are in the first grade or below, the district will inoculate students if there is any doubt about whether they ate the fruit, she said.

At schools Wednesday, administrators were busy answering calls from concerned parents, as teams of nurses surveyed which of the students actually ate the fruit and would require inoculations.

In some cases, students might have accepted the cup but later threw it out, uneaten. Others, especially younger kids, may have chosen to share with a buddy, principals said.

And then there's the problem of peer pressure, said Mount Vernon Middle School Principal Vertia Wright. ``Some students are embarrassed to say they ate the cup,'' she said. ``It's typical middle school.''

Francisca Corral says she will make sure that her two daughters will be vaccinated as soon as possible, even though they do not remember whether they ate berries at Plummer School in Sepulveda.

``Hepatitis to me seems dangerous, it worries me because I'm not sure whether my daughters contracted it,'' Corral said in Spanish. ``I want them to be inoculated because it's better to prepare oneself rather than lament it later.''

Corral will join thousands of parents this week, lining up for the largest coordinated immunization plan of its kind in LAUSD history.

``Because of the seriousness, it may even be the largest in the county,'' said district spokesman Socorro Serrano. ``But it's definitely the largest in the district.''

The inoculations are made up of gamma globulin, which is a protein that is derived from human blood and serves to boost the immune system so it can fight the virus.

Some of the gamma globulin will come from local hospitals, while the bulk will come from a Michigan supplier, Fannin said.

The average cost of an individual dose is about $25, but students attending the public health clinics will not be charged.

Although the parent company of the distributor of the berries has agreed to bear the cost of vaccines, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky issued a warning Wednesday to providers of gamma globulin to refrain from price gouging.

``We don't want anyone to take advantage of this situation,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``We have received some information that some firms might be seeking to charge four or five times what the going rate is for gamma globulin.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo, 2 boxes

PHOTO (color) Deputy Superintendent Ruben Zacarias speaks Wednesday about hepatitis A exposure in LAUSD schools.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News

Box: (1) What you should know

(2) The days students ate the berries

(3) Informacion general con respecto a la hepatitis A