If your young child has been receiving Merck's ProQuad vaccine sequence--a four-in-one covering measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chicken pox)--she may need to move to the separate shots. Merck is having manufacturing troubles:
Merck said Thursday that its ProQuad vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella as well as chickenpox, won't be available from about July until at least year's end.
"It's too early to say at this point whether new (ProQuad) supplies will be available in 2008," said Mary Elizabeth Blake, spokeswoman for Merck's vaccines division.
However, the drugmaker expects to have plenty of two separate vaccines that cover the same diseases: Varivax, for chickenpox, and M-M-R II, for measles, mumps and rubella.
The federal government recommends children get each of those shots twice, once at age 12 months to 15 months and again between ages four and six years old, or — when available — they can receive the ProQuad vaccine twice.
Last year, the government recommended the second chickenpox shot because of outbreaks among schoolchildren, apparently due to waning potency of the vaccine.
...which is why we didn't bother with chicken pox vaccination in the first place, but hey.
The main take-away from this is, instead of two ProQuad shots, your child will now have to get two MMR shots and two Varivax shots.
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