Stacks Image 185

Vaccine choice and flexibility

The increasing number of vaccines given to babies may be contributing to the rapid rise in numbers of children developing allergy and immune related diseases such as asthma and diabetes.
However doctors at the Department of Health have dismissed concerns about vaccine “overload”, reassuring parents that babies can cope with “thousands” of vaccines.
Research has shown that giving a combination of five or more vaccines in a single injection causes
more side-effects than by giving the vaccinations in smaller combinations, or separately.
At BabyJabs we offer mainly single vaccines, with the largest combination usually used being a 3-in-1 vaccine.

Research also suggests that the risk of a child developing asthma can be
reduced by over half if vaccination is delayed until 5 months of age. Delaying vaccination may also reduce the risk of getting hay fever, and also eczema.
At BabyJabs we let you decide when to start vaccinating your baby.

Giving vaccines later is also
more effective. The immature immune system of babies is unable to respond effectively to many vaccines. Vaccines given very early, in the first few months of life, produce weaker immune responses that are also shorter-lasting than that provided by vaccines given later. Research has shown that a baby will produce between 10% and 71% more antibodies for every month a vaccine is delayed. This effect is exacerbated for those women who are given the (4-in1) whooping cough vaccine in pregnancy which reduces the effect of vaccines given at an early age even further.

The NHS schedule is a "one size fits all" package that us unable to account for individual variation. For example, children with frequent recurrent ear infections
respond very poorly to some standard immunisation schedules. At BabyJabs we take account of your child's medical history and your family history when compiling an immunisation schedule.

Another reason to consider spreading out vaccines is to minimise the amount of aluminium injected into your baby. Most of the vaccines used in the NHS contain aluminium. The overall aluminium load can be decreased by giving aluminium-free vaccines wherever possible, and the aluminium load on any single day can be reduced by giving no more than one aluminium-containing vaccine at any one time. Whenever possible, we use vaccines containing no aluminium; when these are not available, we use vaccines containing the least aluminium.

The UK has the most concentrated immunisation schedule in the world. Many other countries do it differently, often preferring 2,4 and 6 months (as opposed to the 2,3 and 4 months used in the UK). The Scandinavian countries all give their primary course of vaccines at 3,5 and 12 months.

At BabyJabs we believe that parents have the right to adjust the immunisation schedule to suit the individual needs of their child, taking into account the child’s medical history and the family’s medical history.