Childhood Immunisations

🧭 When to suspect under-immunisation

Immunisation is one of the few primary-care interventions that protects an individual child and the wider population at once. Status should be reviewed at every relevant contact – not only at booked clinics – because the children most likely to be under-protected are precisely those who attend least predictably. Suspect under-immunisation whenever records are incomplete, unavailable, or unverified.

Raise particular suspicion in new entrants to the UK (migrants, asylum seekers, internationally adopted children), looked-after children, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller families, households that move frequently, and the children of vaccine-hesitant parents. Where overseas records are missing or untranslatable, the safest assumption is that the child is unimmunised and should enter a catch-up pathway.

The schedule was substantially restructured across 2025–2026: the combined MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, varicella) vaccine replaced MMR, a new 18-month appointment was added, the Hib/MenC booster was withdrawn, and the timings of MenB and PCV in the primary course were changed. The core clinical skills are therefore: know the current schedule, distinguish true from false contraindications, catch up safely, and never miss anaphylaxis.

Source: UKHSA Green Book · Routine childhood immunisation schedule