Hindustan Times: Indian Doctors say, Avoid Vaccine Trap!

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Published on

August 08 2009

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Page 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

take care - Have a baby? Watch out for the vaccine trap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/ArticleImage.aspx?article=08_08_2009_007_001 & mode=1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pharmaceutical

companies pushing new vaccines will tell you that your child has no

hope of being disease-free if you don't get him/her vaccinated against

every vaccine-preventable disease. The list is long. HPV vaccination

against cervical cancer; BCG against tuberculosis, DPT against

diphtheria (an acute respiratory disease caused by bacterial

infection), whooping cough and tetanus; or vaccination against

chickenpox ... But what does your child truly need? Of all those listed above, DPT and BCG vaccinations are the only essential ones. They are part of the national immunisation schedule that the government has made mandatory.

Apart from DPT, the schedule includes vaccines against tuberculosis,

polio, measles, mumps, rubella and hepatitis-B. With an

increasing number of diseases now preventable by vaccination,

paediatricians say it is important to know which ones are truly

important. "Under the national immunisation programme, essential

vaccines are given free to all children," said Dr K.K. Kalra, director,

Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, a paediatric specialty hospital in Geeta

Colony in east Delhi. The list of vaccines, said Dr Kalra, was

made after a thorough study of the vaccines, the local disease patterns

and the cost of immunising all the children born in the country in a

year, which is about 10 million in India. "Apart from the three

primary doses s and two booster doses of DTP at two - years and five

years, no special doses e are needed," said Dr Kalra.n He said

though many private hospit tals have been pushing for variants of DPT

and adding booster vaccinations, they were not really needed. Dr Vinod Kumar Paul, head of department of paediatrics at the AIIMS, too said the variants were not necessary.

"I think we should not hype these parallel vaccines, which the private

sectors and companies are promoting for personal gains. My advice is

that instead of getting confused, people should stick to the standard

national immunisation schedule," he said. He said doses were additionally available in the market but there was no national recommendation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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