AskDrSears - The Vaccine Book

New Flu Vaccine Recommendations for Older Children

Monday, August 11, 2008

The American Academy of Pediatric announced a new policy for the flu vaccine. They will now recommend a flu shot for every child age 6 months through 18 years of age at the start of flu season each year. For the past few years the flu vaccine had only been recommended for all kids 6 months to 5 years. Prior to that, the flu vaccine was only used for select children with certain chronic medical conditions that would make the flu more dangerous to them.

The new policy is hoped to go into effect for this coming flu season (2008/2009), but officials aren’t sure if supplies of the flu vaccine will be adequate. It will definitely be in effect for the 2009/2010 flu season. Parents who have been giving their young children a flu shot every year will probably just continue this practice throughout childhood without putting much thought into it. However, parents with older children who aren’t used to this routine will now be faced with deciding whether or not to get the shot each year.

The flu shot has always been controversial because the disease has a very low fatality or complication rate for healthy children and young adults and the shot has a high rate of flu-like side effects. People wonder if they even need it. Each year there are about 100 fatalities in infants, children, and teens combined, and a few thousand fatalities in the elderly. So getting the flu shot certainly can help minimize these tragic deaths. The problem is, the flu shot doesn’t always work. Each year officials have to predict which strains to put into the vaccine for the next year. If they guess wrong and different flu strains circulate (as in 2007/2008), the flu shot doesn’t help much.

There’s really no right or wrong answer, in my opinion. You either get the shot or you don’t. The most critical part of this decision is to make sure you are getting a mercury-free version. As flu season approaches, I will post an update on how to tell which flu shots don’t contain mercury for this coming year.

Labels: Vaccines and their diseases

CNN.com and Dr. Bob help parents answer the question, “Should I vaccinate my baby?”

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

CNN correspondent Elizabeth Cohen explores how parents attempt to answer this question, and how various doctors across the nation are responding to parents’ concerns, in her weekly column on www.CNN.com

I believe vaccines are very important and have played a tremendous role in limiting many serious diseases in our country, as do all of the doctors interviewed by Elizabeth for her column. However, more and more parents are concerned and want to take an approach that varies from the regular CDC schedule. I believe that if more and more doctors offer parents such options, we will have better vaccination rates than we are seeing now.

Here are just a few of the options that Elizabeth presented in her column:

Don’t give the Hepatitis B vaccine to newborns in the hospital. Because this shot can cause fever, lethargy, and poor feeding (problems you don’t want to see in a newborn), it’s better to delay this shot for the first two months of life, especially since the disease doesn’t even occur in newborns (it’s a sexually-transmitted disease).
Checking “titers” (blood immunity levels) for various shots before doing boosters. Some kids don’t need some of the booster shots at age 5 years because their original infant series may still be working just fine. While this is a costly and time-consuming approach, some parents prefer it instead of automatically getting all the boosters.
Getting fewer shots at each infant checkup and spreading the shots out over more time. This is the hallmark of Dr. Bob’s Alternative Vaccine Schedule.
Limiting large combination shots. Some parents prefer to split some of the combo shots into separate components to decrease the chance of a reaction. While we don’t know if this precaution even helps, it is an option that some doctors like to provide for concerned parents.

The bottom line is that more and more parents want options. If we don’t provide them with options they are comfortable with, more parents will opt out of vaccines altogether. We will then see more and more disease fatalities and complications.

Dr. Bob

Labels: Alternative Vaccine Schedule

Plain Mumps Vaccine Shortage - Should Babies Just Get the Full MMR?

Friday, June 20, 2008

Some parents are choosing to split the 1 year MMR vaccine into three separate shots. Although we don't know if this precaution is necessary, some worried parents prefer the choice of getting plain Mumps vaccine at 1 year, Rubella at 2 years, and Measles at 3 years.

With a shortage of the plain Mumps vaccine expected to last the rest of 2008, parents may not be able to get the Mumps vaccine for their babies for a while. I would suggest getting a rubella vaccine at 1 year, and then Mumps at 2 years (by the time any current one-year-olds are two, the shortage will hopefully be over).

Some parents are wondering if they should get the full MMR vaccine at age 1, not just to get coverage for mumps now, but also to get measles coverage in light of the recent increase in measles outbreaks. I think that this is a very valid choice to consider, especially for infants who are entering childcare or early preschool. For children who are not going to be in daycare or school until age 3 or 4, delaying the measles vaccine is less of a worry.

Labels: Vaccine News