Question: hey sarah, i wanted to know weather vaccines they give the infants abroad would be the same dosage/vaccination as the ones i would have been given when i was younger? i know this is your \'special area\' so please reply.

Sarah Burl answered on 15 Jun 2010:

This is a good question. Some of the vaccines are the same but many are not. In the Gambia children get BCG (against TB) at birth which is not given to children in the UK unless you are in a high risk area. They also get hepatitis B which is also not given to children in the UK. The polio vaccine is an example of a vaccine that is given both in the UK and The Gambia but is a different vaccine. In the Gambia they give the ‘live’ vaccine and in the UK they give the ‘inactivated’ form. The reason for this is that the live vacine is a better vaccine but 1:1,000,000 children my get polio from it so in a low risk area like the UK they give the inactivated vaccine which is not as good a vaccine but has much less chances of getting polio. The other vaccine that the children get in the Gambia but not in the UK is yellow fever. In the UK children also get Meningcoccal C which they don’t get in The Gambia.