If your child is aged between 2 and 16 years, the NHS will offer them the nasal spray flu vaccine in autumn or winter.
Before deciding whether or not to give consent, parents and guardians might want to explore safety, efficacy, ethics and necessity.
Giving a flu vaccine to all children, every year, is a recent development – what are the health implications? Does the flu vaccine work well – does it really protect the child and those around them? What are the associated risks? And is it ethical to vaccinate children with the goal of protecting adults?
Finally, is it necessary? Should we be concerned about the creeping normalisation of medicating our children rather than supporting their natural immune systems?
If you want to do more research, the information below is a great starting point.
For otherwise healthy individuals, influenza is an unpleasant but usually self-limiting disease with recovery usually within 2 to 7 days.
The Green Book (UK Government information on vaccines)
A closer look at the flu vaccine
Why is the flu vaccine offered to children?
Information Leaflet and potential side-effects
Why is the flu vaccine offered to children?
What is flu?
Information Leaflet and potential side-effects
Why is the flu vaccine offered to children?
Information Leaflet and potential side-effects
Information Leaflet and potential side-effects
Information Leaflet and potential side-effects
Fluenz nasal vaccine ingredients
Fluenz nasal vaccine ingredients
Information Leaflet and potential side-effects
In my view, this is unnecessary for healthy children who are at very low risk from flu. The evidence suggests that while proven influenza cases are reduced, they are simply replaced by other flu-like illnesses.
Retired paediatrician and Informing Consent medical adviser
Further reading
Doc Malik has written a lengthy deep-dive into the children’s flu vaccine, available here. He has also produced an accompanying podcast episode.
Among other things, he notes:
- The vaccine is described as being free, but it is actually paid for with our taxes.
- The NHS doesn’t offer parents clear information about exactly how risky (or not risky) flu is for their child – despite government data being available.
- Giving a child a vaccine to protect others is ethically questionable.
- The three virus strains inside Fluenz are not fixed, they are swapped out every single year. This has implications for safety studies, both complete and ongoing, as the product is not the same each year.
- Parents of asthmatic children should be particularly cautious about the vaccine.
Doc Malik states:
‘...when the government and health authorities talk about flu causing “complications” and “hospitalisation,” what they are actually describing, in their own data, is a risk to your child of just over one in 100,000 per year, and roughly half of even that small risk sits in children too young to be eligible for the nasal vaccine at all.’
Next steps
You might want to talk to your doctor or health provider about the flu vaccine, before deciding whether to go ahead. Read more about how you might approach this.
If you decide not to go ahead, you will need to make this clear and our template letter for school may be of use. (See link below.)
You might want to consider getting your child a card from the Control Group, to help them assert their position in your absence.
Staying healthy, with or without vaccination
There are many ways to protect your children from illness. Learn more on our family health page.
If you do decide to vaccinate, there are options for supporting your child through vaccination.