Hi all,

Firstly, I have searched the forums and only found information about this in the "Marriage" Sub forums - and not a lot about kids.

as you might have noticed from my wife (MrsHawkini) and myselfs posts, we're currently ramping up for our move to NC in about a month - we've got a place sorted out and now need to start the ball rolling for enrolling our 10 and 12 year old at schools in the area. We know which school and district they'll be in, and everything is fine (well mostly) apart from the required record of vaccinations.

Basically, as many people point out, the UK does NOT give the Varicella vaccine as standard. What should we be doing at this point? I'm assuming they will NOT like the fact that there is no record of them having the vaccine, and yet we know they have had it...

Any help from someone who's had the same experience let me know!

From reading the NC requirements it says children born after 2001 should have one dose given between 12 and 19 months old, so your children don't fall into that as they weren't here. they have a religious and medical exemption if you want to look into it. They may ask that you give the one dose or get blood drawn to check for immunity. Have they haven't already had chicken pox?
We didn't do chicken pox one but here I just had to sign the back of the big vaccine form at the school and they never asked about it again.

The one they are hot on around here is Hepatitis B.

For chicken pox, if you know they have had the disease it should be OK.

Our son is 17 now, so our experience is many years old so may not be applicable now, but our son had chicken pox when he was toddler and so we just included that on the form we had to fill in, and it was never queried.

I haven't read back through your posts, so excuse me if you've already mentioned it, but while you are still in the UK I would get your children's doctor to give you a record of the vaccinations they have had to date so far to bring with you.

Also don't sweat it too much, because if they are missing any vaccinations it won't stop you enrolling and starting them at school, generally they give you a grace period to get them done.

That's good to know that we can still enroll. Last thing we want is to drag the kids around everywhere while they suffer from side effects of loads of vaccinations

Hepatitis B - an odd one that - can't find it in their vaccination records. Don't suppose anyone knows if this can be done on NHS with reason that we're going to US and its mandatory?

Yeah they've already had it - but tough to prove without a blood test...

Any chicken pox scars? Our son had a couple of small scars and when we had our Green Card medical, many moons ago, they noted that and as such he didn't need to have the vaccine as they could see he had already contracted chicken pox.

I think they have to have that for 6th grade here (not 100% sure so check on that) and it's a series of vaccinations over a (I think) 3 month period so you won't have time. So just get it done when you are over here.

You may not need it where you're going, and you may not have time to do it in the UK, there are 3 shots. Here it is mandatory to have it by 7th grade, so it wouldn't be a rush for your younger one.

However, I have found they can be very officious and difficult here, but a lot of it is bluster, you find out later on that nobody else has taken any notice of the rules

Is there any reference to chicken pox on their doctors records? our school would have been happy with just a print out (unfortunately SD never attended the doctors as all they tell you to do in the UK is put calamine lotion on!). The blood test doesn't take long - we had our results back next day.

That is so very true, we thought that we had gotten our son all up to date with his vaccinations before moving here, only to discover that the school system wouldn't allow one of his vac's because it had been done before he was four and not after, so he had to have it again.

If you don't have a doctors letter saying you've had it, get a titre test done, that'll show you've had it.

Most schools would accept that as proof, US immigration do.

Get the test done in the UK, should be free or very cheap. In the US, medical insurance could well cover it if the doctor does a full medical and wants a record, other wise you might have to pay, and it could be anything from not much to a couple hundred bucks.

I found this very helpful when my DD started school in NC.

I also brought my DD doctors record book from the UK and the US Dr was happy with this and transferred the information onto their records and provided me with a certificate of vaccinations.

Hope it helps.

http://www.immunizenc.com/schoolreqs.htm

This is a neat service from the Centers for Disease Control

http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/kidstuff/newscheduler_le/

Put your kid's birthday in the form and it will print out a schedule of what vaccinations they should receive by what dates. NOTE: These are the recommended CDC guidelines which are followed by almost all of the states, but each state has their own guidelines for schools that you will need to check. A few have a couple extras given their location and history of outbreaks.