Children’s Vaccinations

Vaccination is one of the safest and most effective ways to protect against highly contagious diseases (such as measles, rubella, mumps, diphtheria and polio).

How vaccines work

Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies that:

• Fight infection and help the person recover.
• Prevent the person from catching the disease in the future.
• Vaccines do not usually cause the disease in order to produce these antibodies.

---

Vaccine safety

Before vaccines are licensed for children, they are tested extensively to make sure they are safe. Most parents’ worries about vaccines are based on misinformation rather than evidence. If parents decide not to vaccinate their child, they expose not only their child to the risk of a serious or fatal illness, but also others around the child to infection.

---

Delaying vaccines beyond their due date

It takes weeks after vaccination for the child to develop protective antibodies. Delaying the scheduled doses exposes the child to infections that could have been prevented by keeping to the vaccine schedule.

---

Side effects vaccines can cause

Vaccines often cause no side effects, but they can cause:

• Redness, mild swelling or soreness where the needle was given.
• A mild fever.
• A mild skin rash.
• Headache or body aches.

Most of these side effects occur within a day or two of vaccination, but they can occur one to two weeks after the injection for some vaccines (such as the chickenpox vaccine or the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine). Vaccines occasionally cause more serious side effects (such as severe allergic reactions), but these serious side effects are very rare.

---

Vaccines given to infants and children

• Hepatitis B vaccine: Hepatitis B can cause liver problems or, in the long term, liver cancer.
• Tuberculosis vaccine: Tuberculosis usually affects the lungs but can affect other parts of the body such as the bones, joints and brain.
• Diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine (DTP): This vaccine prevents three different diseases together in one dose. Diphtheria causes a thick coating at the back of the throat that can lead to breathing problems; tetanus disrupts muscle function, making feeding and breathing difficult; and pertussis (whooping cough) causes severe coughing and pneumonia.
• Polio vaccine: Polio causes muscle weakness and pain and leads to permanent paralysis.
• Rotavirus vaccine: Rotavirus causes severe diarrhea in children and infants, causing them to lose a lot of body fluid and putting them at risk of dehydration.
• Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) vaccine: Haemophilus influenzae infection can cause infection of the skin, throat, joints, or the tissues around the brain.
• Pneumococcal vaccine: Pneumococcus is a germ that can cause infection of the lungs, ears, blood, or the tissues around the brain.
• Measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR): This vaccine prevents three different diseases together in one dose. Measles causes a skin rash, fever and cough and can lead to long-term complications involving the lungs, ears or brain; mumps causes swelling of the glands in the cheeks and can lead to long-term complications in the brain or testicles; and rubella causes fever and a skin rash, and if a woman catches it during pregnancy her baby may be born with a birth defect.
• Chickenpox vaccine: Chickenpox causes fever, sore throat and a skin rash, and some children may develop complications and get an infection of the lung or brain.
• Hepatitis A vaccine: Hepatitis A causes fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, abdominal pain, jaundice (yellowing of the skin and eyes) and dark urine; its complications include acute liver failure and death.
• Meningitis: It causes inflammation of the membranes of the brain, along with fever, severe headache, nausea, delirium and coma, and may lead to death. In younger children the symptoms may be different and include constant crying, lethargy, reduced movement and refusing to feed, and may not come with a fever.
• Seasonal influenza vaccine: Influenza causes fever, chills, muscle aches, cough or sore throat.

Children receive the vaccines above on the dates set by their age, according to the national vaccination schedule.
Source: Saudi Ministry of Health