Tuesday, July 28, 2009

New Vaccine that combines Chickenpox with Measles

Our clinic has started stocking the MMRV vaccine which is used for your child's second year vaccinations.

MMRV stands for Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Varicella (Chickenpox). In the 2nd year of life, kids are required to take the MMR vaccine as a compulsory vaccine. The Chickenpox vaccine is optional, but many parents are choosing to vaccinate their children against this infectious disease because of the risk of scarring and severe disease

With the MMRV vaccine, you can now reduce these two jabs to one. Normally, we would advise children to take the Chicken pox vaccine at 12 mths and MMR at 15 mths. With this new vaccine, both are combined into one jab and can be given from 12 mths onwards. So this is very convenient for our busy parents. The price of our second year package which includes the MMR, Chickenpox and 5-in-One vaccines remain unchanged at $210 if you choose to use the new MMRV vaccine.

The MMR and Chickenpox vaccines are still available separately.

Read my article on why you should vaccinate your child against chickenpox here.
Listen to me discuss the importance of chickenpox on 938live here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dr Tay

Can this vaccine be administrated together with the Pneumococcal vaccine?

Dr Leslie said...

Yes it can

Anonymous said...

Hi Dr Tay,

The MMRV is 1 jab only? Does it require booster shot?

Dr Leslie said...

The second MMR is usually given at primary one by the school health service. However, you can opt to give a 2nd dose of MMRV 3 months after the first dose. Then you would not need to give the MMR at primary one. By giving a second dose of chickenpox vaccine, you also give the child a higher level of protection. The 2 jab regime for chickenpox is currently being practised in the US but we have not adopted it officially yet.

Missy said...

Hi Dr Tay

I just came across your clinic blog and found it very informative! My daughter is 15 months now and is due for MMR vaccine. Am now considering MMRV. May I know what are the side effects for MMRV? Is it more serious than MMR side effects? I heard that majority of kids had high fever after the MMR...