The ‘Childhood immunisation’ campaign highlights the importance of vaccination and the protection provided by the childhood immunisation programme. The campaign is running in community pharmacies throughout August and September as part of the Living Well service.

Living Well is a community-based pharmacy service offered in over 500 pharmacies across Northern Ireland. It is delivered in partnership with the Public Health Agency (PHA), Community Pharmacy NI (CPNI), and the Department of Health (DoH). The service supports you in improving your health and wellbeing by:

•    raising awareness of various public health messages and campaigns;
•    sharing of health and wellbeing information;
•    signposting to a relevant health professional, service or support in the community;
•    and using behavioural interventions, if appropriate.

Through the Living Well service, pharmacies help you to address risk factors that contribute to ill health in Northern Ireland. 

Vaccination is the most important thing you can do to protect your child against ill health. After clean water, vaccination is the most effective public health intervention in the world for saving lives, promoting good health and preventing serious illness.

Due to the high number of children receiving vaccinations in Northern Ireland over the past number of decades, many serious childhood infectious diseases are rarely heard of. Recently, however, vaccination rates have seen a slight decrease. It is crucial vaccine uptake remains high in Northern Ireland to prevent many of these serious diseases returning from parts of the world where they still occur. If this happens, children living in Northern Ireland who are not vaccinated will be at risk of these infections and potentially life-changing complications, even death.

Vaccination is like a protective shield. Vaccines work by training your body’s immune system to make antibodies, which are proteins that help fight infection, just as it does naturally when it’s exposed to a disease. If you are re-exposed to the disease in the future, your immune system ‘remembers’ the disease and quickly destroys it before you become unwell. The Childhood immunisation campaign encourages parents and guardians to have their babies and children vaccinated according to the routine childhood immunisation schedule. This will give them maximum protection against disease.

For more information, call into your local community pharmacy and pick up a free Immunisation protects leaflet or visit  www.nidirect.gov.uk/childhood-immunisation