Welcome news for parents as chickenpox vaccine to be made free for children

The HSE has announced that the chickenpox vaccine will be available for all babies from the age of 12 months old and it will be free of charge. Parents previously had to pay for the vaccine.

Babies who were born on or after 1 October last year will be able to avail of the vaccine from their GP once they turn a year old as part of the routine childhood immunisation schedule. 

However, the rollout is so far limited to children of this age group. Parents of children who may be slightly older will still need to pay for the vaccine.

Speaking on Morning Ireland on Thursday morning, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at CHI Tallaght Hospital, Dr Ciara Martin said people have been "waiting a while for this."

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Although chickenpox is a common and mild disease for most children, Dr Martin explained there can be a number of complications associated with it such as skin infections, viral pneumonia and in rare instances it can affect the brain and nerves.

The vaccine has been around a long time, despite the HSE only implementing this rollout now. Speaking on this, Dr Martin said: "It was felt that this is a good time to start it now, when we're just settling into a new schedule of vaccinations that will continue for the next five or six years.

"It's been a little slow to come through, that is true, but I think that the focus is that we have it now. It's a safe vaccine. It certainly has been available for a number of years."

Like with all vaccines, the aim is to eradicate chickenpox and gain herd immunity. However, Dr Martin explained that to do this we would need a 95% uptake and currently the uptake of childhood vaccines is around 85-90%, which she described as "concerning."