With so much information on immunization available from conflicting and often questionable sources, it’s easy to get overwhelmed or confused about the facts. A child requires various doses of immunization throughout infancy to adulthood. It is important to be regularly updated with the doctor for your child’s immunizations from time to time.
16 vaccines – some requiring multiple doses at specific ages and times – are recommended from birth to 18 years old.
Immunizations help to protect teenagers and their communities from serious infectious diseases.
Immunization is a key component of primary health care and an indisputable human right. Vaccines are also critical to the prevention and control of infectious-disease outbreaks. We provide vaccinations in our clinic, and recommend MMR vaccine, DTP vaccine and PCV vaccine within 12 months of birth.
Babies are born protected against certain diseases because antibodies from their mothers have been passed to them through the placenta. Breastfed babies also get the continued benefits of additional antibodies in breast milk. But in both cases, the protection is temporary.
Immunisation is a way of creating immunity to certain diseases through small amounts of a killed or weakened microorganism that causes the particular disease. These small amounts are administered through vaccines.
Vaccines stimulate the immune system to react as though there is a real infection – it fends off the ‘infection’ and remembers the organism so that it can fight it quickly should it enter the body later. The vaccines are unlikely to cause any serious illness because the components of vaccines are weakened or killed; and in some cases, only parts of the microorganism are used.
Immunization of adolescents is, as important as, it is in children. Vaccines are offered to adolescents to protect them against the diseases that have higher morbidity (hepatitis A, varicella), or higher incidence (mumps, meningococcal infection) during adolescent period. It is also aimed at boosting the waning immune responses of certain vaccines administered during infancy/early childhood (measles, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, etc). Pneumococcal conjugate single dose is recommended.