Vaccinations for Children

Being human, we naturally seek the safety and security of certainty

Reality teaches us improbability and impossibility

So we need to (try to) achieve a balance between the ancient trinity of Ethos, Pathos, & Logos:  Ethics, Emotion and Logic.   Logic always comes last...

I freely admit as a confirmed camper to being concerned about Malaria, but after reading and researching the actual risk (and the side-effects) of prevention I decided to be vigilant.   After 3 years of travel through many rural areas in Northern Laos and Vietnam, Thailand etc, I can report the risk is too low for me to be concerned beside (sometimes) Mozzie nets and repellant.

I got tetanus and hepatitis shots, but rabies and yellow fever (etc) being too low risk to be OTT (Over The Top) of becoming paranoid.   My subjective choices.

Read and research.   It is choice, not chance that decides our destiny.

I'm happy with mine

   Try typing in 'recommended vaccines for S.E. Asia', the W.H.O. advice, and Google


Vaccinations for Vietnam - TMB - Tropical Medical Bureau ...
https://www.tmb.ie/destinations/vaccina … r-viet-nam
For most short-term travellers the usual recommended vaccinations for Vietnam include cover against the childhood diseases (Tetanus and Diphtheria, Measles, Mumps and Rubella) as well as cover against the food and water borne diseases, including Typhoid and Hepatitis A. For those trekking in the Vietnamese countryside ...

Yeah, we've traveled for short periods before. I'm more interested in the specific "long term" recommendations--e.g. my wife has had the BCG vaccine (as she grew up in VN), but I never did, and of course our children haven't...

@Bazzy139
Can you share the sources of your information regarding your objection about vaccinations?
I hope you're not one of those vaccination conspiracy theorists. 

After my first health check here in Vietnam, my doctor recommended me to do the hepatitis B vaccination, although this is generally not considered mandatory when staying in big cities. But I followed the doctor's recommendation. 


@All
Here is a link that shows the risk of vaccination damage.
http://www.vaccineinjury.info/vaccine-d … neral.html (recording of vaccinations in Germany).

I don't know.

Australia has a compulsory inoculation process that begins at birth thru to sixteen

The 'anti-vac' lobby is a (very) minor noise.   Most parents can understand necessity

Read and research works for me

Andy passenger?   Read a dictionary.

Bazza139 wrote:

Andy passenger?   Read a dictionary.

Because of my nickname?

Hi Asthasr, im also searching infomation about the BCG vaccine for US children moving abroad to Vietnam, luckily found your post here, I am asking some friends about this, if I have this information I will share to you, or if anyone has this information, kindly share with us. Thank you

From the US Center for Disease Control (CDC):
"Children. BCG vaccination should only be considered for children who have a negative tuberculin skin test and who are continually exposed, and cannot be separated from, adults who

    Are untreated or ineffectively treated for TB disease (if the child cannot be given long-term treatment for infection); or
    Have TB caused by strains resistant to isoniazid and rifampin."

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/fac … on/bcg.htm

It would seem that unless you are a health care worker in a TB facility and you bring your children to work, vaccinating them would be overkill.  in the very rare case that someone in your family contracted TB (this is not 1960) a regular course of treatment would be readily available.  There are parts of Micronesia where TB is a real problem and these people have free entry to the US, but it is not common in modern Vietnam.  In fact, I don't recall that a TB X-ray is even required for Vietnamese emigrating to the US.

It also appears that vaccinated persons will have false positives on skin tests which could mean a lifetime of needing x-rays instead.

More than BCG, you should consider Hepatitis A & B for yourself, but you will need to consult with your doctor to see if your children are already vaccinated.  The CDC now recommends infant vaccination for Hep B and Hep A at one year.  Your children may already be covered.  In fact it is less likely that you are vaccinated as these are fairly new vaccines, having been intorduced in the 1980's to 90's.   If the children are not they should be, as these diseases are much more common in Vietnam than in the US.  My wife tested positive for a prior regular infection with Hep B.  She didn't even know that she had had it, but perhaps was a small child when she was infected.

Thanks THIGV so much for your fully information. I am wondering about bringing my kid 4 yo now back to Vietnam to study elementary school there, so he can learn the Vietnamese language fluently first, then move back to US when he reachs high school. I want him to learn & good in biligual languages & have the childhood knowing & experiencing traditional of Vietnam. But I need to pursuade my family. I dont know if it is good decision or not. Could anyone give me any advice about that? Thank you

Is your child a Vietnamese citizen?  If not, I don't think he can attend public school.  If he can, I would suggest that you not keep him there past grade 5.  You should know from your own experience that Vietnamese education is mostly about memorization and standardized tests.  Thousands of Vietnamese High School students are only wishing that they could attend school in the US or Australia.

Hi THIGV, thanks  for your reply. My child & I are US & Vietnamese citizen. In Vietnam now there is many International schools that pupils & students can learn lessons by both languages. My child can attend the school there, so he can learn Vietnamese & English. Because in US we hardly find a school teaching Vietnamese well. Just wonder which ages is ideal for him to be back in US to continue the study path here, so he can familiar with the accent of native US English. Do you think it is a right decision? Please share your thought. Thank you

One general observation I have made is that children learn the languages of their mothers first, then the language of their environment and peers (the playground) then the language of their fathers (if it differs from the mother's.)  If your child does not speak Vietnamese, it may be because you are not speaking it enough at home. 

The widely accepted critical period hypothesis of language learning says that children can learn any language as L1 up to about age 5-7.  If you left your child in Vietnam, even in an international school, beyond that age he may have at least some Vietnamese accent all his life when speaking English even if he was fully fluent academically.  I recently posted about the daughter of a friend who spoke only Vietnamese when she entered Kindergarten and just graduated from the Univ of Hawaii.  Her English is of course fully fluent and unaccented and as far as I know her Vietnamese is fine as I see her conversing with her parents' peers. 

Literacy, reading and writing, can come later if he wishes it to.  Thanks to Fr. Alexandre de Rhodes, he will not have to memorize over 2000 characters as a second generation Chinese student will.  The Univ. of Hawaii has a one semester course in reading and writing Vietnamese especially designed for students who are verbally fluent.  I am sure you can find something similar in California.

Save your money and speak Vietnamese at home.

We speak Vietnamese at home, my child speaks Vietnamese at home, we  often travel between US & Vietnam. He speaks very well, he has the good ability in talking & learning. We live together with my parents who just speak Vietnamese.  Also he can know how to translate it to English also. And he always asks me if I says new Vietnamese words, he would ask what it means, why I dont say the old familar word instead, at that time I will explain to him that what that words mean, why I says that because Vietnamese has many relevant meaning words, you can use to express, to talk. That’s the reason why I want him to study in bilingual school, thus he can be fluent in 4 skills reading, listening, speaking & writing. But as you said & my observation through my friends, it’s a little bit hardly fluent both, need to choose 1 only: Unaccented English & Vietnamese not fully fluent, or Fluent Vietnamese 4 skills & accented English.

Mai Tran 9999 wrote:

But as you said & my observation through my friends, it’s a little bit hardly fluent both, need to choose 1 only: Unaccented English & Vietnamese not fully fluent, or Fluent Vietnamese 4 skills & accented English.

It may be difficult for you or I to comprehend, but he really can be fully bilingual since he is learning both languages while still in his "critical period."  The example that I gave of the young lady is just such a case.  Her timing was just right and his will be too. 

As far as reading and writing Vietnamese, I think you can teach him yourself at the same time he is learning to read English.  It sounds like he is already intellectually curious about language which is excellent.  He may not be the next Nguyen Du (who wrote in Chữ Nôm anyway so what you read in school was essentially a translation)  but your son certainly can learn to read and write well enough to practice law, medicine, or banking in Vietnam.   

Sorry to others for being  as this thread is nominally about vaccinations, but this business of bilingualism at a high level is something that interests me as an ESL teacher who used to struggle with helping IELTS students.

FV hospital in Phu My Hung can administer all the vaccines you need.

find the hospital or clinic that handles vaccines and take the kids there with any documentation. They should have a list of the ones you will need and at what age. There are a few that I haven't seen in Australia that seem necessary here.

Having lived in several tropical countries, the last two of them with a growing child, I'm with Bazza39's advice. By all means get encephalitis and rabies for your child, the latter especially if they like patting stray dogs like mine. Also make sure everyone's 10-year dttp booster shots are up to date (including your own), which I gather is called DTaP these days, which is recommended also in the 'developed' world. Mine is due again, so I'll have to chase it up. Yellow fever is only endemic in parts of Africa and Central and South America, which is why they often ask on visa application forms whether you've visited there recently, otherwise not needed. Hepatitis if you plan to go go off the beaten track or eat suspicious food (or engage in unprotected sex). And yeah, malaria and especially dengue (a bigger problem in the cities): just don't get bitten ;-) So far so good with fingers very firmly crossed, though a couple of friends ended up in ICU with dengue in Malaysia and one is very sick in Saigon at the moment.