Fighting fit and ready to learn

When COVID-19 locked down schools last year, our childhood vaccinations programme had to take a back seat.

While many of our nurses were moved to other role to help fight the pandemic, the importance of immunising children against diseases, such as meningitis, diptheria and polio, didn’t go away.

Once the schools re-opened in September 2020, the team was brought back together, but it had some serious catching up to do.

Immunisation Lead Nurse Claire Collard explained: “We had a backlog of 12 and 13-year-olds to immunise against human papilloma virus (HPV) and we also needed to give older teenagers their booster jabs.

“Not only did we have the ones that were missed during the first lockdown, but we would often arrive at a school to carry out scheduled vaccinations and find that several classes or even a whole year group would be self-isolating and so were unable to have their jabs. We needed to provide an alternative to families so they didn’t miss out on vital protection.”

The service quickly set up a programme of community catch-up clinics in local schools and other venues to give parents another chance to get their children vital vaccinations, including drive-through clinics at St George’s School in Thanet.

Claire explained: “People were keen to get their children vaccinated, but were often still concerned about going into buildings with lots of other people around. We came up with the idea of a drive-through so parents and children could stay in their cars and we could give them their jabs without them leaving their vehicle.”

Despite freezing weather, the first drive-through clinic was successfully held in February 2021, vaccinating around 200 children. With excellent feedback, the team decided to run the clinic again in the summer holidays. More than 100 children were given 200 life-saving vaccinations.

Claire said: “Some teens are self-conscious or anxious at school and just don’t want to have an injection there and go back to the classroom. So, we had some who we could jab safely with their parents with them and they could then go home and chill out.”

Ruth French, from Canterbury, brought her son Ben, 12, along for his second human papilloma virus (HPV) jab.

Girls aged 12 and 13 have been vaccinated against human papilloma virus (HPV) for the last decade. Now the jab has been extended to include boys of the same age. HPV is most often linked to cervical cancer, but it can also cause mouth and throat cancer.

Ruth said: “To be honest, I hadn’t even realised that he needed his second jab so we were really grateful to get the call from the service to remind me. Then when they said we could come to the drive-through in the holidays we were delighted.

“Ben doesn’t like getting vaccinated at school so this was ideal for us, we also liked that we could drop-in and not have to stick to a set appointment time – which works well for busy families.”

The school-aged Immunisation Team will be out and about in schools across Kent and Medway again from September delivering life-saving jabs and the flu immunisation nasal spray. Find out more: www.kentcht.nhs.uk/immunisation-team