Leitch recommends vaccines for children
Speak to experts if in doubt, says clinical director
SCOTS parents nervous about getting their young children vaccinated have been urged to speak to health care professionals before ruling out the lifesaving jab.
Professor Jason Leitch yesterday urged families to get their five to 11-year-olds jabbed as he said the ‘balance of risk’ is now in favour of extending the vaccination programme.
On the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, the national clinical director said: ‘It’s my strong recommendation that you think very, very carefully about vaccinating your five to 11-year-old.’
Asked if he would recommend the jab for young children, he said: ‘Yes, it is, unless you have a contraindication or a reason not to do that, for instance, a medical reason in one of your children, or something else going on.
‘I would suggest you have a conversation with a vaccinator once those appointments come out, discuss anything you want to talk about.
‘They’re trained, they can answer your questions. If they don’t know the specific answer to your kid’s challenge, if they’ve got a rare complication or something, then they’ll have somebody else in the clinic who’ll be able to help them with that.’
On Tuesday the Welsh Government announced it would become the first of the four UK nations to begin offering vaccines to five to 11-year-olds.
It came after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended extending the rollout. However, this was not formally published until Wednesday when Scotland and England also announced they would jab young children.
Speaking about the JCVI’s decision, Professor Leitch said: ‘This group of experts, who do vaccination for a living, they have now said that the balance of risk is now in favour, particularly because of rare, severe disease in young people, still very rare but possible, that we should offer a vaccination to all five to 11-year-olds.
‘In full conversation with parents, carers, young people – don’t panic and do it all tomorrow. Do it in a considered and gradual way.’
Professor Leitch said that while it was ‘unusual’ to hear of children getting ‘quite sick with this disease’ it does happen, adding: ‘Some people listening will have sailed through Omicron in particular and think, “This is nothing”.
‘The reason it feels like that is, in the main, the wall of vaccination we’ve put up as a population against it. So, we don’t treat it lightly, it’s still a very, very serious disease.’
Professor Leitch also cited a report from December 2021 by the World Health Organisation which said that around 27,000 lives had been saved in Scotland thanks to the vaccine.
He said: ‘We think in Scotland the vaccination has saved nearly 30,000 lives, so it is safe, but that doesn’t mean we are going to line everybody up and inject everybody without consent.
‘It is important we have those conversations at the right time, when we have got the drug available and the parents are ready for it.’
‘Balance of risk is now in favour’