I do not know if it will be happening in many medical centers in the country, but in the center where I work, asking colleagues, yes there are some parents, not all, who had decided not to vaccinate their children and now go to vaccinate them , worried about the case of diphtheria that we have talked about so much these days.
According to the press, Olot's boy's parents said they felt cheated and in this situation they chose to receive a souvenir vaccine themselves and vaccinate their other daughter. That change of opinion (more than logical) is what many parents are living these days, and many do not know very well what to do about it, if they are in time to get vaccinated, how many doses of each vaccine they should receive, etc. Therefore, If you have not vaccinated your children and have changed your mind, we explain below what you can do.
Where to go?
To vaccinate your children you must go to the center where the health checks of babies and children are performed, that is, at primary care center Where are the children discharged. In case the visits are made by a private pediatrician or through health insurance, you can go to them too.
Can they get vaccinated if they didn't do it as babies?
Of course. Vaccines have defined guidelines for babies, which are the recommended guidelines for all babies who are vaccinated from the beginning. They are the ones we know the most because they are the ones that the majority of the population uses. However, there are other tables for cases like this: children who have never been vaccinated and start from scratch, children who have been vaccinated in another country but do not have the vaccination data (when in doubt of which vaccines it carries and which it does not, it is done a complete vaccination) and children who have vaccines from other places but who, when arriving in Spain, need vaccines that are here and in their country of origin.
What are these administration guidelines?
In many autonomous communities there are specific guidelines, so they may differ between the two communities. In order not to make variations and complicate the message more, we offer you the vaccination tables published every year by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, more than anything so that you understand how the topic works.
For children with ages between 4 months and 6 years this table is followed:
On the left you have the vaccines that should be administered, although not all of them are available. Meningococcal B, for example, does not enter Spain, so it cannot be administered. The chicken pox, for now, either. Pneumococcus and rotavirus are optional in many Autonomous Communities, although Prevenar 13 (pneumococcus) does enter some. And the flu is seasonal and does not enter by calendar (only children with a tendency to suffer respiratory or chronic diseases are recommended).
The minimum age at which it should be administered means that it cannot be placed below that age. Once the first dose is administered, the minimum time that must pass to administer the following is set to the right. The amount of dose will depend on the age of the child at the time of putting the first, or on the age at the time of putting the last. In the case of diphtheria, for example, one is given at the first visit, a second one month later, a third one month after the second, a fourth 6 months after the third and a fifth 6 months after the fourth . This fifth is not administered if by placing the fourth the child is already 4 years old.
When children who are over 7 years old, the table is as follows:
The operation is the same, only the doses are less, because as the child is already more than 7 years old, he needs less vaccines to get the same protection (It has a more potent immune system that makes more defenses with fewer vaccines). Again taking the example of the tetanus and diphtheria vaccine, a dose is given, a second one month later, a third 6 months later and a fourth 6 months after the third. In this case, the vaccine is of low antigenic load, since administering a high-load vaccine (baby's) increases the risk of adverse reactions, without requiring so much burden.
Actually, to explain the whole guideline, it would be necessary to explain vaccine by vaccine, but it is more important information for professionals than for parents, for a matter of knowing how many doses to put, when and what vaccines they are. But we have put it so that you have an orientation and that you know how the pattern is, how it works and when each one plays. If you want more information about it, you can see the tables and the most comprehensive explanation on the AEP page.
