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When Preparing For Back To School, Don’t Forget Your Child’s Vaccines

| August 8, 2017 @ 5:04 am

By Tyler Greer

School has started for some children in Alabama, which means school supplies, backpacks, new shoes and a perhaps a new outfit or two have occupied parents in recent weeks.

University of Alabama at Birmingham physicians are asking parents to take inventory of another school-year need for many children: vaccines. Each state and the District of Columbia has its own vaccination requirements to attend public school, and if you have not vaccinated your child according to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) recommended schedule, but need to do so now that he or she is school age, you still can.

UAB physician David Kimberlin, M.D., vice chair of Pediatrics, co-director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and the American Academy of Pediatrics liaison to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, says it’s not too late to start getting your child caught up and back on the recommended schedule.“The best way to treat diseases are to prevent them in the first place, and the diseases on the vaccine schedule are all preventable for the vast majority of our population,” said Kimberlin, who is also editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Red Book, which establishes which vaccines should be given, when and to whom. “These diseases that are preventable through vaccination – polio, measles, rubella, diphtheria and others – can cause major harm unless your body has been taught through a vaccine to resist the disease. If you haven’t vaccinated your children previously and want to do so now, talk with your pediatrician about getting caught up, because it is possible and highly recommended.”

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