The UK's Department of Health have today announced the following changes to the childhood vaccination programme:
- An inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) will be used instead of live oral polio vaccine (OPV) for all ages;
- An acellular pertussis (aP) vaccine will be used instead of a whole cell pertussis (wP) vaccine.
From the end of September these vaccines will be given in the routine vaccination schedule in a combined vaccine along with Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Hib.
Professor Elizabeth Miller, Head of the Immunisation Department at the Health Protection Agency said, “These changes introduced by the Department of Health are as a result of the studies looking at responses to vaccines which we carry out at the Agency, and also our continued monitoring of the pattern of the diseases which these vaccines protect children against.
“Now that polio has been eradicated from large parts of the world, we no longer need a ‘live’ polio vaccine as the risk of contracting the disease is so low. This is an improvement as very rarely, the live vaccine has been associated with causing cases of vaccine associated polio – so for this reason children will be given a ‘killed’ version of the polio virus which also offers good protection against the disease.