The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children age one or above who have not had chickenpox, or whose history of chickenpox is uncertain, should receive the varicella vaccine. Children age 12 months through 12 years receive a single dose; youngsters age 13 and above receive two doses four to eight weeks apart. No recommendation has been made yet regarding booster doses although this may become necessary at some point. All of the insurance plans we participate with cover this immunization.
The vaccine is generally effective at preventing chickenpox. This means that if a child who has been vaccinated is exposed to chickenpox, he is not likely to contract it, and furthermore, if he develops chickenpox, his symptoms will be milder than they would have been if he had not been vaccinated.
The chickenpox vaccine is safe and well tolerated. Most children suffer no side effects. The most likely side effects include fever within several days or a mild chickenpox-like rash between 5 and 26 days following the vaccination. There have been no instances reported in which someone has developed chickenpox after being exposed to a person with this rash.
Note: children should not receive the vaccine during an illness with fever or while they are receiving chemotherapy or immunosuppressive medications.
We recommend this immunization. It is required for school attendance in Pennsylvania. Although chickenpox is usually a mild childhood illness, before the vaccine became available it caused annually 11,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths in the United States, so it is an illness worth preventing. Also, now that children are being vaccinated in large numbers, fewer cases of chickenpox are occurring in the community, and therefore the vaccination has become the major source of immunity to this illness for most children. The vaccine is safe; we have administered it to over 5000 children in our office since 1995, and have observed no serious side effects.