Does anyone know whether chicken pox vaccine is given routinely in Australia.

[sherbert]

My 5 year old has just come down with it, and has been playing with 2 year old australian cousin all weekend. Parents dont know whether they have had a vaccine or not.

No, it is optional, I didn't vac my kids, They got it in mild form of their own accord. Just go with it, you know people used to have chickenpox parties to deliberately infect groups of kids so they literally got it into and out of their systems.
Even if you get the vaccine, you can still develop chickenpox at the time of vaccination.

at what age do they get it the vaccine? Its jsut that BIL and nephew are on holiday over here would hate to think the poor little lad will be travelling about all spoty and miserable without the comforts of home.

chicken pox is given to children at 18 months old here - so if parents chose for child to have it - he would have it.

Don't know about Australia, but in the US kids get the vaccine when they get their MMR and it's required before they can go to school.

My reason for posting here is that it's very, very, very rare for kids to get the chickenpox if they get the vaccine. If they do, it is a MILDER case than they would have gotten anyway.

We're paying private for our DD to have the vaccine and can't believe it's not available in the UK. (Well I'm sure the NHS has made their decision based on the supply/demand of costs associated with this, and nobody asks for it since most people are ignorant and think that chickenpox is 100% harmless.)

Suzy...glad to know your kids were fine with the chickenpox. However, you would not be saying..'just go with it' if your kids had of been very ill, or worse still...well you know what I mean.

Kids can die from the chickenpox and I'm tired of hearing so many people say..it's no big deal. People need to get the facts about this and decide what they want to do.

I know there's a very minimal chance of a reaction to the vaccine and I hope and pray DD does okay with it, but I would not think of making her suffer or worse for something that has a vaccine and the vaccine has been around for over 15 yrs.

Sherbert.hope all is well with the kids.

suzy dd1 was not vaccinated and she got a bad case of it when she was about 18 months old. Absolutely covered and just sick for days.... including puking all night etc - not good. Do know when my brothers and I had it - they got a good dose - I got three spots in my hair!!

not my hair hair - on my head iyswim.