What if my Child misses a vaccination
If your child misses a vaccination, don’t worry—there are safe ways to catch up. Discover steps to take, recommended timelines, and tips for staying on track with your child’s immunizations to ensure their best protection against preventable illnesses.
Vaccination in Babies
Vaccination builds antibodies in the immune system to prevent the body from many lethal diseases without causing any severe illness or risking life to death. Many life-threatening diseases like Measles, Whooping cough, Mumps, Meningitis, Polio, and Rubella can be prevented only through vaccination in babies. Babies are the developing human body that may suffer a lot of pain, serious illness, or disability if these contagious diseases attack them. Hence, it is more important to vaccinate the babies up to date. Delaying or not vaccinating the babies may lead to severe illness or lifelong disabilities if they are exposed to contagious diseases.
What happens if a child misses a Vaccination
Once a baby is born, the hospital lists the vaccination schedules to the parents. They can visit a hospital or a Healthcare provider or call a pediatrician to immunize the babies. If a child misses a shot, the vaccine can be administered or rescheduled to another slot by the pediatrician. Parents can book an appointment for the catch-up vaccination schedule by consulting their paediatricians. Once this is done, they must keep track of the vaccination dates to include all shots. The main objective of vaccination is to protect our children from harmful diseases before it is too late.
Catch-up Vaccination:
When a baby is not vaccinated or when a vaccine dosage is missed or to complete the vaccination series for a baby, one can opt for a catch-up vaccination session with the pediatrician or health providers in the clinic. This is highly recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) for kids who have missed a vaccination routine.
The catch-up vaccination helps fill in the missed shots for a baby within a short period. Many vaccines are combined and given as a single shot without side effects, allowing the baby to stay on track with its immunization process. The catch-up vaccination will fasten the process of maintaining immunity against the severe diseases mentioned above. Delaying a vaccine will always make the babies more vulnerable to getting infected, which may be a considerable risk.
Effective steps to help ensure your child never misses a vaccination:
Babies must be vaccinated at the scheduled time. Suppose under any circumstances one misses the vaccination. In that case, it can be rescheduled with the help of the child's pediatrician or a health advisor to fix an appointment and upgrade the vaccine chart for the kid up to date. Some tips that can be followed to avoid missing the shots are listed below.
Tip 1: Record the baby’s schedule
The child's vaccination dates can be marked on the calendars at home, which are frequently checked, or a digital calendar can be used, which can send notifications about doctor appointments. Setting a reminder on the phone about the dates and timings of the vaccination schedule will also go hand in hand. This type of record helps us to be organized, and no shots will be missed.
Tip 2: Use of Technology:
Nowadays, many hospitals and healthcare providers have their own online portals where one can sign up and fill in the details of the babies. This portal helps to view the babies' vaccination schedules and also informs about the upcoming vaccination dates. Adding to this, many apps have been introduced to track babies' appointments with doctors, which come with features like sending messages or notifications as reminders.
Tip 3: Scheduling the appointments:
When visiting the Paediatrician, one can confirm the next appointment date and schedule the upcoming vaccination accordingly. Getting vaccinated on a general check-update helps reduce the number of visits a baby has with the doctor.
Tip 4: Feel free to know about vaccination
All parents must be well aware of the importance of vaccinations and the diseases they prevent from harming the baby. Knowing more about the shots and the questions that each child's parent has can be clarified by the doctor or the healthcare providers; this helps us stick to the vaccination plan schedules without any confusion.
Parents must always be cautious and ensure that babies are vaccinated correctly with all doses. Missed doses can be rescheduled, but they should not be missed for extended periods.
