Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) Releases New Vaccine Guidelines

Now, there are some additional vaccines to be given to children that include Japanese encephalitis (JE), influenza, hepatitis A, chicken pox, and typhoid. The above two guidelines were released for the first time on December 18, 2022 by a group of two Paediatrics doctors including Dr YK Amdekar.

In his conversation, the doctor clearly stated that our vaccination programme needs to work aggressively to combat diseases. He also pointed out that it was due to the present vaccination schedule that India has been able to phase out diseases like Polio.

The team of doctors further pointed out that the resurgence of measles in the recent past is a perfect example of disruption of immunization drive that happened due to the COVID pandemic.

This is what Dr Amdekar said, “A successful immunisation program is of particular relevance to India, as a significant number of infant deaths here are due to vaccine-preventable diseases. Substantial progress has been achieved in the country in this regard, resulting in the prevention of several diseases,”  he said.

The doctor stressed the need for health professionals to combat all the misconception that dissuaded parents from letting their children vaccinated against some dreaded childhood diseases in the recent past.

The updated treatment protocol has been published in the “The Purple Book” which is widely available for over 40,000 IAP members. Also, the data is updated every time after a gap of 6 months.

Dr Remesh Kumar R, who’s the president of Indian Academy of Paediatrics stated that his departmnt has supplied the special child health record books to a number of health professionals.

The book has all the necessary information like immunization schedule, growth charts, emotional quotient tracking, and some more useful information.

This is what Dr Remesh said, “Among the vaccines suggested in the new course is the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine whose efficacy increases manifold when given to girls in the age group of 9 to 14. The influenza vaccine is important till at least 7 years of age, as up till then, almost half of the high-grade fevers are caused by seasonal cases of flu,” he said.

In their latest statement, IAP suggested that JE vaccine should now be given to all children s the disease earlier restricted itself only to some states but now, it’s spreading to other Indian states as well.