School year 2024: what are the mandatory vaccines for children before starting classes

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Before the beginning of the 2024 school year in Argentina, parents and guardians must ensure that their children receive mandatory and free vaccines (Getty)

Girls and boys are especially susceptible to diseases. When they enter primary school, the universe of people they come into contact with increases. Boys also tend to share objects all the time without properly washing their hands.

That is why it is key that children have access to the vaccines that are scheduled for school entry, and they are also a requirement that schools require for the beginning of the school year.

At this stage, immunization guarantees the effectiveness of the vaccines that children received during childhood, through booster doses, single doses or the beginning of other vaccine schedules.

For children under 5 years:

• Polio
• Triple viral (against measles, rubella and mumps)
• Triple cellular bacterial (against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough)
• chicken pox

Vaccines are one of the main measures to avoid a set of preventable diseases that can be serious for our health (EFE/Federico Anfitti)

At the age of 11:

• Hepatitis B (in some cases)
• Triple viral (if it was not applied in early childhood)
• Acellular bacterial triple (if it was not applied in early childhood))
• HPV vaccine: for boys and girls.
• Quadrivalent anti-meningococcus vaccine: booster.
• Yellow fever (in so-called risk areas

The vaccination card is a very important document in which all the vaccines a person receives are recorded (Getty Images)

In Argentina, vaccines are within the official Calendar of the Ministry of Health of the Nation, and are mandatory and free.

The goal is for children to have complete, long-term protection against eight diseases that can be serious: diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis or whooping cough, poliomyelitis, measles, rubella, mumps and chickenpox. Therefore, it is important to accompany girls and boys to prevent them from developing various infectious diseases that can be extremely serious.

Vaccines from the National Vaccination Calendar are administered free of charge at any vaccination center, health center or public hospital throughout the country.

“Parents and carers should take into account the national vaccination schedule. They should also consider the recommended dose for COVID-19,” Silvia González Ayala, president of the Argentine Society of Pediatric Infectology, told Infobae. “In addition to immunization, it must be taken into account that girls and boys must wash their hands frequently, they must not share utensils or food and they must have access to a healthy diet, to prevent different diseases,” she added.

Many years ago, when vaccines did not yet exist, there were epidemics that caused irreversible consequences or thousands of deaths per year (Getty)

• Polio: is the vaccine against poliomyelitis. Thanks to vaccination against polio, no cases have been recorded in Argentina since 1984 and the Region of the Americas was declared polio-free in 1994.
• Triple viral (against measles, rubella and mumps). It includes protection against measles, which is a febrile eruptive disease and can cause various complications, including death.
• Triple cellular bacterial (against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough).
• Chickenpox: the first dose should be received at 15 months and the booster at 5 years, before school entry.

Although vaccines against COVID-19 are not on the National Calendar, they can be administered together with any other vaccine (dpa)

• Hepatitis B: If you received the regimen during childhood, you do not need to be vaccinated again. Otherwise, it is necessary to start or complete the scheme as appropriate before the end of primary school. There are 3 doses: one month after the first dose, the second is given, and 6 months after the first, the third is given.
• Triple viral: prevents measles, rubella and mumps. If you already received the vaccine during childhood, you do not need to be vaccinated again. Otherwise, it is necessary to start or complete the scheme before finishing primary school.
• Triple acellular bacterial: it is the immunization that prevents diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
• HPV vaccine: for boys and girls.
• Quadrivalent anti-meningococcus vaccine: booster.
• Yellow fever: only for residents in risk areas, as the only booster 10 years after the first dose.

Measles is a highly contagious infection that is prevented by vaccination (CDC/Dr. Heinz F. Eichenwald)

At the beginning of February, the National Ministry of Health confirmed a case of measles in an unvaccinated 6-year-old boy who resides in Barcelona and arrived in the City of Buenos Aires on January 27. Two days after arriving in the country, he developed fever, then cough, rhinitis, conjunctivitis and Koplic spots. The patient evolved favorably.

After confirmation of the infection through analyzes by the ANLIS-Malbrán Institute, the national health authorities issued an epidemiological alert to reinforce surveillance of the disease.

The child had arrived in the country from Spain, in the midst of the rise in infections registered on the old continent. In 2023, 42,200 cases of measles were registered in 41 States of the European Union, compared to the 941 cases reported in the previous year.

In Argentina, the last case of measles reported in the country had been that of a 19-month-old baby in Salta, with no travel history and who was also not vaccinated. The child contracted pneumonia and had to be hospitalized in intensive care, with a good subsequent evolution.

“There is a risk of measles outbreaks occurring in Argentina and other Latin American countries. In the city of Buenos Aires, an imported case of a 6-year-old child was detected,” Dr. Ángela Gentile, pediatric infectologist, epidemiologist, head of the Epidemiology Department of the Ricardo Gutiérrez Children’s Hospital, member of the PAHO regional committee, told Infobae. /WHO and president of the National Immunization Commission (CoNaIn) of Argentina.

Dr. Gentile emphasized that “in the current context, immunization coverage should be increased and families should accompany children to receive the triple viral vaccine, which includes protection against measles,” as reported by Infobae on February 9. .