Free vaccines for boys and girls in 2023
✅ Meningococcus vaccine B
The meningitis It is a rare but very serious disease (it can cause death or leave significant sequelae), which affects 1,000 people every year in Spain, most of them under 5 and adolescents. There are three vaccines in the vaccination calendars against the most common bacteria that cause meningitis, in addition to the MMR vaccine (measlesrubella and mumps), which prevents meningitis caused by the mumps virus.
- Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) at 2, 4 and 11 months.
- Meningitis C at 4 and 12 months with booster doses at 12 years.
- Pneumococcus at 2, 4 and 11 months.
However, there are still two vaccines recommended by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) to prevent meningitis that are not subsidized by the public system throughout the country.
One of them is the menigococcus B vaccine, which will be implemented in all communities and they will be funded. If they don’t make it in 2023, they have until the end of 2024 to include it. So far only Galicia, Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Catalonia, Castilla y León and Galicia have it in their calendars. Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid will join this list next year.
To prevent it, they are administered three doses of the 4CMenB vaccine (Bexsero). at about 106 euros each. It occurs at 2, 4 and 12 months of age, being vaccinated in time at 2 and 4 months of age particularly important.
Likewise, the recommendation, approved in 2018, to administer two doses of this same vaccine to people belonging to previously unvaccinated risk groups is maintained. In addition, it is recommended that you receive a booster dose one year later and every five years thereafter.
⚠️ Instead, the MenACWY vaccine will remain unfunded. And this is because the growing incidence of serogroups W and Y in Spain makes it necessary to introduce them into the calendar at 12 months of age (as Andalusia, the Balearic Islands, Castilla y León, Galicia, Melilla and Murcia already do) and in adolescence (12 years), recommending its application as a rescue up to 18 years. The cost per dose (two or three, depending on the brand) does not reach 55 euros.
✅ Influenza vaccine for children from six months to five years
The complaint It’s not just serious in the elderly and people with certain chronic diseases. It is also present in expectant mothers and their babies. Therefore it is also recommended getting a flu shot while pregnant and in the case of child and adolescent population with conditions at risk do this every year from six months of age. In all these cases, vaccination is financed.
However, Andalusia, Galicia and Murcia have decided that this season the vaccine will also be given free of charge to children aged 6 to 59 months, which will happen in the rest of the country in October 2023 (Asturias and Castilla y León planned it).
The decision to include this universal flu vaccination in children under five is approved by various medical bodies. It has been proposed since 2012 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international regulatory agencies, such as the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Indeed, in May, the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) renewed this recommendation in its influenza vaccination strategy during the pandemic. These requests were joined in 2021 by the Vaccine Advisory Committee of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (CAV-AEP).
For children aged six months to two years there is an injectable vaccine (20 euros), while children who are two years old can receive an intranasal vaccine (37 euros).
✅ HPV vaccine in teenage boys
The human papilloma virus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI). Although it usually causes no symptoms, it sometimes causes genital warts and can lead to cancer of the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, anus, or throat.
Until now, there was only the HPV vaccine on the vaccination schedule for 11-12 year old girls and people with conditions at risk. and the
However, medical experts (and parents too, as seen in this AEP survey) have always believed that this 12-year-old vaccine should be universal, for both girls and boys, and be included in the vaccination schedule, because both are exposed to the virus in their sexual intercourse. So, in that of Catalonia, it is also from this same school year for boys studying 6th grade, as happens in Galicia, Murcia and the Valencian Community.
These regions have been added since January Andalusia and, following the announcement by the Inter-territorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS), the rest of the autonomous communities, even though five others had announced that they would soon incorporate them. The first to receive the two doses (each of 150 euros) will be the children born in 2011.
And what about the rotavirus vaccine?
According to a document approved jointly in 2008 by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, the Spanish Society of Pediatric Emergencies and the Spanish Society of Outpatient Pediatrics and Primary Care, vaccination against rotavirus is the best strategy to prevent infection.
For this reason, millions of families vaccinate their children, allocating almost 200 euros for this vaccine, which is recommended to be applied before six months of age in two or three doses, depending on the brand. And that’s it is only funded for premature babies (babies between 25-27 and 32 weeks gestation at birth) since 2019.
Tan only in Castilla y León all children Those born on or after January 1, 2023 and residents of their territory will receive this vaccine free of charge.
