Whether your kids are entering kindergarten, heading off to college or somewhere in between, do you know which vaccines your student needs?
Kelsey-Seybold pediatrician Dr. Debra Cutler recommends some high school-age kids heading to college in certain parts of the country, consider a meningitis B vaccine.
“If they're going away to school, and they're going to a school maybe in the northeast which is had a lot of cases or in California which is had a lot of cases, then I recommend it,” Cutler said.
For little ones entering classrooms for the first time, pre-K to kindergarten, here's what they'll need:
DTaP (for Pertussis)
polio
measles, mumps, rubella vaccine (MMR)
chickenpox
and the pneumococcal vaccine
“Pneumococcal vaccine is to prevent pneumococcal disease. The most serious things it causes are meningitis, it causes pneumonia,” Cutler said. “They also cause ear infections, sinus infections, and we've seen less ear infections even since we started giving the vaccine.”
After kindergarten shots, students won't require another vaccine until about middle school.
“Age 11, it is recommended that they get their meningitis vaccine, and their Tdap vaccine. That has to be done before they start seventh grade,” she said.
Without these vaccines, some kids may not be allowed at school if there's an epidemic of sorts.
According to the state health department, school districts in our area tend to have less than 1 percent of students not vaccinated.
Cutler said unless a child is immunocompromised, meaning their health is too fragile to handle the drugs, everyone should be keeping vaccines up to date.
“There's been over… 300 cases of mumps in Texas this year. There have been 108 cases of measles in the United States this year, and measles has a lot of complications short-term and long-term. So, I would not want to run the risk of my child being the one person that got that.”
Last year, two schools in Fort Bend had cases of tuberculosis. George Bush High School continues testing for the disease Wednesday, Aug. 3 on campus.
Cutler recommends talking to your doctor about TB, mumps, measles, meningitis and the flu.