have you given your child the chicken pox vaccine

[passivehoovering]

Hi all,

DD is 3.5 and is about to start her second year at nursery. She hasn't had chicken pox, and I really don't want her to. I don't want my darling child to get ill, feel bed, get scars, have awful complications, be seperated from her friends...So I was thinking about getting the Chicken pox vacine for her. I have mooted this with friends who also have children but they seem to want their kids to get chicken pox so I am wavering a bit.

If you have vacinated your children could you tell me how you went about it and where you found info? I don't know if I should try her GP in the first instance and ask them for info from Medline and if they know of anywhere that does the vacine. Also how was your child after? Anything else you can tell me would be much appreciated too.

Thanks

I didn't mean that immunocompromised people could be vaccinated, I meant those whose immune response had dropped over time.

Vaccination has not been going very long in the US so at this point as they are vaccinating kids only and not adults also, I can see that would be the case. I was meaning shingles could be reduced in a long term scenario where children are vaccinated and then given a booster later. It would not work in the short term I admit.

Sorry, I didn't mean to start an argument. I am so, so sorry that your daughter died mrsDeVere, there are no words. Just so very sorry.

I didn't think that you said immunocompromised people could be vaccinated Farlo. You did seem to think that a mass vaccination campaign of children would be necessary to save those adult lives and I was just pointing out that, unless they were immunocompromised, those adults could be vaccinated themselves -therefore saving lives without the mass vaccination of children.

Risk of childhood stroke is approximately 6 in 100,000 from here. Please be aware that it is a very rare complication. I think someone said earlier that you always hear about the worst cases on these threads.

"Should we all vaccinate against flu to protect them as well? What else? Where do you draw the line?"

Aren't there discussions afoot about introducing the flu vaccine to the schedule?

Also, now that there is a shingles vaccine, is there any reason other than cost for not vaccinating children against CP and adults against shingles?

Yes, I thought so- flu vaccine to be introduced in 2014ish

I got shingles as a young woman, luckily for me it was across my rib cage. I've heard that when older people get it across their eyes the pain can lead them to suicide. I got it across my ribs as a young woman, it was the worst pain I have ever endured. Worse than a transverse homebirth, worse than a dental extraction, and longer. Now if I see a child who looks like they are recovering from cp I shudder. The pain of shingles has left me scared of children with cp. If the vaccination would prevent shingles I am all for it, if it would increase adult cp or shingles I am not.

What's the risk of stroke from the cp vaccination bumbley? Or the risk of death? 6 in 100,000 is preventable. The risk is low with cp but it's there and it's preventable.

There's a shingles vaccine. No one need suffer shingles either.

Mrsdevere, I'm so sorry about your daughter and her suffering. I think you've been incredibly patient and controlled considering what you've been through.

Jesse, you can't catch shingles from Chickenpox so you don't need to be afraid of children with CP. :) You can catch chickenpox from shingles though.

6 in 100,000 is all childhood strokes, not just those caused by CP. They are not all preventable.

There are also risks with vaccination, as you are well aware.

In Italy its part of the routine ones , so both mine have been done. DD2 actually picked up a very very mild case 4 mths after the vaccination , probably as we were both exposed to a very bad case, mother said the scars etc had dried etc and she was in the same holiday complex as us. I picked up a very mild case of shingles ( very very painful and mine was like a tiny patch) then a few weeks later dd had some spots. We had them checked by 2 gps as we had to fly a week later after they appeared.
I am of the belief that GPs / Paeds have studied , qualified and carry on updating and informing themselves in order to advise people. So If I trust my paedatrician, which I do then I do what he says. I do do some back ground reading but not the scaremonger sites.

"another reason to make sure you're immune!" - yes, by vaccinating!

What are the risks from cp vaccination bm? How does this risk compare with the risks of not being immune? Some NUMBERS please before starting this argument.

Btw, we have a case study in action over the pond. In the States, the cp immunisation programme has been hugely effective. "Chickenpox deaths in children are becoming a thing of the past," from a CDC report. THe vaccine has saved LIVES. It's worth noting also that cp deaths aren't just from within immunoincompentent populations. Healthy children and adults can die from cp. Even though the vaccine is an attenuated virus, the vaccine has been shown to be very safe with over 40 million doses administered!

bm: , you've still not addressed my query as to what you would have done? Would you have all women of childbearing age regularly check their immunity until menopause? This still wouldn't prevent cp deaths in children. What would you like to see done? I've experienced first hand how people are silly with ill kids. There's this notion of 'oh, they feel better now, we can go shopping'. Or 'you're not that ill, go to school'. Whether you and your friends do it, lots and lots of people DON'T take reasonable steps to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.

We know from the MMR shambles that you can't always rely on the experts though. That is always going to be an issue in this country. Given the tiny numbers reported to have been affected by the MMR, and the consequent drop in the numbers giving their child the vaccine, it doesn't take much to knock people's confidence in doctors, especially when they appear to disagree. Not everybody has the ability to do the research themselves and they will respond to scare stories.

As I understand the very tiny but most serious risk of the CP vaccine is not stroke but pneumonia.

Surely you would check women when they are pregnant like you check for rubella immunity (or you did the last time I was pregnant)? You won't be able to vaccinate but they would be able to take precautions to avoid infection and be able to act quickly if they were at risk of CP?

But if you are only vaccinating children and you aren't vaccinating against shingles they are still going to be at risk for the adult population who have natural immunity but may have shingles.

Seems to me that the only way round this is either to check immunity or vaccinate the entire popultion or vaccinate the children from CP and the adults from shingles.

Mind you I got CP when I was 9 from a 9 yr old girl with shingles so I am not sure that scenario covers everybody.

Sorry second paragraph should say you will still be risking adults without CP immunity because they could catch it from adults with shingles. And of course babies who haven't been vaccinated yet would also be at risk and for them CP is more often a very serious condition.

Yes, BfG, if you are tested as an adult and are not immune then I think getting yourself vaccinated makes senseparticular if you are a woman, so that you can pass that immunity on to your baby. If I was not immune to CP myself, I would go and get a vaccine myself - not give it to my children to protect me!

The risks of side effects of the vaccine are small (although we have discussed the underreporting issues earlier) as are the risks of complications from CP in childrenso it's not like it's an obvious choice. You have to consider the disadvantages too, waning immunity, ineffectiveness of boosters etc.

Healthy children very rarely will die from CP, BFG - you can look up those numbers yourself before you start that argument

I think the more reasonable approach, rather than another mass vaccination campaign, would be to educate people about quarantining children with CP and vaccinating the adults who are not immune. That would save lives too. As BBB suggested, women could be tested for it during pregnancy. They obviously aren't as concerned about the risks of CP during pregnancy as they are about rubella or they would be testing for it already.

BBB, an immune mother would pass on antibodies to her baby so that would protect them when they are most vulnerable.

My DD developed meningitis from the chicken pox virus. However I don't know whether the vaccination would have prevented it as she had chicken pox when she was 2 and meningitis when she was 18!

DS who is now 11 has never had chicken pox so I would consider vaccinating him if it was readily available.
I noted that one of the paralympic swimmers had a leg amputated due to chicken pox complications and was a bit

How was it linked to CP so many years later Youvecat?

My uncle was at risk of having to get a leg amputated from complications from a scratch to his knee

Sorry, his shin.

They didn't know what was causing the meningitis until they did a lumbar puncture and got the lab results back!

Yes, but there isn't a vaccine against scratching your shin, so the analogy doesn't work.

bumbleymummy - unfortunately you can't assume that babies will have immunity from their mothers. The two worst cases of CP I know of were in babies, both of them around 8-10 weeks old and both caught it from their older siblings. They were in hospital a long time. It was a bit odd actually as I don't think I have met anybody since and this was when DS1 was about the same age (we met doing baby massage) and he is now 12. Anyway, babies will be at risk if not from their older siblings, were a vaccine to be introduced, then from anybody who had shingles.

I can see your point BBB and bm, but am I the only one on this thread that thinks relying on precautions to either avoid others with cp when pg or to isolate children at home with cp is a pretty flawed public health message?

How many people are told to finish the course of antibiotics and never do so? I know so many people who send kids to school off-colour or who insist themselves go to work when ill, or in the lovely example of my neice, who have d and v and go out as soon as they stopped vomiting for a few hours!!! Many, many people choose to live their lives for their own self-interests. It's human nature.

I'm not sure a national vaccination campaign would be a great answer and so I follow the news and watch the States with interest....but neither do I think we can naively believe we can change the spread of contagious diseases with these sorts of health messages. I know people, fgs, who still don't wash their hands after going to the toilet!

LeBFG - no, you are not alone and people don't keep their poxy kids at home, at least not around here.

Bumbley: maternal immunity against chicken pox is not very good.

I think that the shingles aspect makes CP vaccinations slightly different from other diseases that we vaccinate against and I am coming to the conclusions that you do all or nothing - you vaccinate children against CP and adults who are immune to CP against shingles, That would involve a mass programme of testing for immunity in adults I should imagine or do we just assume that if something thinks they have had CP they actually have?

Unfortunately, that is a massive undertaking both in terms of getting coverage and in terms of cost. As I said earlier, I don't think there are any easy answers to this one especially when you factor in the MMR effect, makes vaccinations a bit of can of worms in this country.

FWIW I think the flu vaccinations are a bit different because we have had those before but it will be interesting to see what the take up is.