5 Vaccines That Can Protect Your Child's Health and Wellbeing

Your child’s early, adolescent, and teen years are likely to be free of preventable disease thanks to vaccinations. Childhood diseases and mortality rates are much lower than they were a hundred years ago, thanks in large part to vaccines.

At Pediatric Care of Four Corners in Davenport, Florida, Dr. Eiman ElSayed offers all recommended vaccinations to help keep your children safe from preventable disease. There are five specific vaccines you’ll need to make sure they get, especially as they continue to approach school-age.

Vaccine basics

Starting at birth, your child will receive vaccines for various easily prevented diseases, according to a vaccination schedule that is carefully calibrated to offer maximum protection as early as possible in your child’s life. In addition to being vaccinated for Hepatitis A and B and getting a pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccine, there are five vaccines that prevent some of the most dangerous and most contagious illnesses.

IPV (polio)

Polio has been all but eradicated in the United States thanks to the polio vaccine. Your child needs four doses of inactivated polio virus to be fully vaccinated. The doses start at the two-month well-child visit and finish at 4-6 years of age.

Varicella (chickenpox)

This vaccine protects not only against the highly contagious chickenpox, but also its many complications. Serious side effects of chickenpox can include flesh-eating strep, staph toxic shock, and encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain). Your child needs 2 doses of the chickenpox vaccine; the first dose is given at 12-15 months, and the second at 4-6 years.

DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis)

This combination vaccine requires five doses to fully protect your child against diphtheria, tetanus (lockjaw), and pertussis (whooping cough). The doses start at the two-month well-child visit, and finish at 4-6 years of age. Your child will need regular boosters for tetanus every 5-10 years.

MMR (measles, mumps, rubella)

As a safeguard to help protect against measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles), all highly contagious and potentially very serious diseases, your child needs two doses of the MMR vaccine. The first dose is given at 12-15 months, and the second between the ages of 4-6 years.

Flu (annual)

Once a year, around the beginning of October, your child needs their influenza vaccine. This vaccine changes every year as scientists strive to predict how the flu virus will have mutated from the year before. Even if the flu vaccine doesn’t offer 100% protection, it can lower your child’s chances of a potentially deadly flu infection. 

Is your child due for a shot? Contact us and we’ll set it up. You can call us at 863-201-8949 or contact us online to request an appointment.