Children to be offered chickenpox vaccine on NHS

By the NHS, all young children in the United Kingdom will be able to obtain a free chickenpox vaccine starting in January next year. It will be available in two doses, aged 12 to 18, as well as the existing MMR jab, which shields against measles, mumps, and rubella. So that they don't miss out, a catch up campaign is planned for slightly older children. Parents who want to shield their children from the chickenpox varicella virus, which causes red itchy spots, have often had to pay up to £200 privately.

Ministers are hoping that the vaccine-free vaccine would not only shield children from the severe, yet rare, complications of chickenpox, but also save parents from having to look after a sick child. Chickenpox accounts for an estimated £24 million in lost income and productivity each year in the United Kingdom, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.

We're giving parents the ability to shield their children,

health minister Stephen Kinnock said.

This vaccine prioritizes children's wellbeing first and provides working families with the assistance they so richly deserve.

The announcement was made as new results revealed that none of England's key childhood vaccines met the target of 95% in 2024/25. Some 91. According to the UKHSA, 9% of five-year-olds had one dose of the MMR vaccine, unchanged from 2023/24 and the lowest level since 2010/11.

'Life saver' vaccine

Chickenpox is generally mild, but for some people, it can be very severe. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable because it can cause problems for both the mother and her baby. Compared to children, infants and adults are also more likely to experience serious illness. In rare circumstances, it may lead to brain swelling, pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lungs, and stroke, which can result in hospitalization and, in rare cases, death. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), which oversees UK health authorities, has recommended the use of the vaccine on the NHS in November 2023. According to experts, vaccination will dramatically reduce the number of chickenpox infections overall, with far fewer of the more serious ones. Immunization therapy, according to Dr. Chickenpox is a rotten disease that is often thought of as trivial, according to Prof Adam Finn, a paediatrician who was a member of the JCVI. Chickenpox

is going to be a thing of the past in the near future,

he said. Prof Finn said the UK has lags behind other nations in offering the jab, including the United States, where it was first introduced in the 1990s. The main reason for this was chickenpox

lurks around in your body for the remainder of your life,

he said, and varicella zoster virus (VZV) or shingles can later develop. According to health experts, if chickenpox stopped spreading,

people would not be re-exposed to the virus, their immunity would wane away, and we would see more shingles.

We've now discovered that the fear is much, much smaller,

he said. Willow and Mia, Sarah, a mother of two children, say the vaccine would have benefit her young children Willow and Mika. Both girls needed hospitalization to recover from severe chickenpox last year. Mia, her infant, had spots

head to toe

and had a skin infection, making her extremely ill.

She was just completely out of it. floppy. It was just an awful situation to be in.It was absolutely terrifying.

I would never want any child or any parent to go through what we've been through,

she said. All adults over the age of 65, those aged 70 to 79, and those over the ages of 50 and over have a severely impaired immune system. People with chickenpox are unlikely to catch shingles. However, they can get chickenpox from someone with shingles if they haven't had chickenpoop before. It's likely, but it's very rare to have chickenpox more than once. Kinnock, a vaccine researcher, told the BBC that the government was worried about uptake and vaccine resistance, which he said has risen after the Covid pandemic.

The benefits of vaccination and the fact that it is 100% safe

will be promoted at national and local campaigns, according to him. On social media, Trump said that the government was also committed to fighting disinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines.

Our job as the government, and anyone else out there who is on the side of common sense and reason, is to make this case and win this war against the conspiracy theorists,

Kinnock said.