Chicken Pox Vaccines

The chicken pox vaccine will be added to the 15 month immunisation schedule from July 1st, and one dose will be free for all children who turn 15 months on or after this date.

One funded dose will also be available for children who turn 11 years on/after 1 July 2017 AND who have not previously had chickenpox disease or immunisation.

For those under 13, two doses are recommended to maximise effectiveness. This is done six weeks apart. Please note, currently only the first dose is free. You have the option to pay for the second dose. Break-through chickenpox occurs 20-30% of the time after a single dose, compared to only 2% with two doses. However a single dose has over a 95% chance of preventing severe chickenpox.

The unfunded cost is $80 (per dose).

It will also continue to be funded for certain high risk groups of people see page three here. Two doses are free for these groups of people.