Vaccines

The 24th to 30th of April marks World Immunisation Week. This is a global campaign to raise awareness of the importance of vaccinations across the life course to reduce illness and death.

In the UK the NHS vaccination programme sets out a schedule of when vaccinations should be given to provide the best protection against illness. This programme prevents around 5000 deaths and over 100,000 hospital admissions each year in England.

However, over the past years preventable childhood infections that were once eliminated have re-emerged due to low levels of population immunity. Most recently, there has been an increase in cases of measles and whooping cough across England and in our region.

Raising awareness of the importance of vaccinations in children is a key priority to increase childhood immunisation uptake and to keep children healthy and free from vaccine preventable disease.

(Information shared to school from the Local Authority-April 2024)