We have decided to do a selective immunisation schedule for our little chap.
His first jab is at 2 months and we want to give him DTPa only.
Our vaccine preference is to use Daptacel by Sanofi, or alternatively Tripacel (Tripedia in US) by Sanofi. It seems our Doc couldn't find Daptacel, so she wrote us a script for Tripacel.
However it seems Tripacel is no longer available in Australia. After speaking to Sanofi they said since the contract with the government finished 2 years ago they no longer hold it locally.
It appears that there is no DTPa ONLY vaccine available in Australia. In Australia all DTPa vaccines seem to combined with others, ie. HIB, HEP B etc. There use to be another DTPa vaccine by Glaxo called Infarix, but again it seems impossible to get, and definitely not our preference for numerous reasons.
Would anyone know how to get hold of Tripcel, or Daptacel locally, or arrange getting it imported? I am even starting to wonder what NZ does, and if they do have Tripacel, go over and get some.
I have spent the last couple of weeks looking into this further and basically your options here in Australia are limited. You basically only have 3 DTPa vaccine options all made by GlaxoSmithKline and all combination vaccines. The 3 options are :
We are going to go w/ option 2 at the 2 month, 4, 6 month, and at 3,5,6 month give the pneumococcal one. We are not doing Hep B, Rotavirus, or HIB. Interestingly the UK also does not routinely administor Rotavirus and HepB. Additionally if you are in the UK you can get a DTPa only vaccine called Pedicel - this is what the NHS administor.
Hope this helps. It is a pitty our choices are limited.....
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