Should health care professionals get the chicken pox vaccination?

The varicella (chicken pox) vaccination is indicated for health care professionals who did not have chicken pox when they were young. They are at risk of contracting it from people they treat; and, unfortunately, adult cases of chicken pox tend to be much more severe than childhood cases. In addition, a health care worker who has active chicken pox can spread it to patients who may not have had the infection. This scenario could be very serious, especially when dealing with immune compromised individuals on either end.

 

A very high percentage of young children have been vaccinated against the chicken pox since 1995, when the vaccine was first released. This has resulted in a dramatic decline in new cases of varicella, which also has lessened the risk for people who have never contracted chicken pox. Even with this demonstrated success, the vaccine is still appropriate as chicken pox continues to exist in the population. As an offshoot of varicella vaccine science, a licensed herpes zoster or shingles vaccine is now available. The latter is a modification of the chicken pox vaccine, primarily an increased dose of the varicella vaccine given to people 60 years and over to minimize the potential for recurrent varicella-zoster virus infection, which leads to shingles. This vaccination restimulates the body’s immune response to varicella-zoster virus that is latent in the sensory nerve cells located near the spinal cord.

 

To summarize, for those health care workers who have never had chicken pox, there is the Varivax vaccine, and for those who have had chicken pox or are at increased risk of developing shingles––such as people over 60, there is Zostavax, the shingles vaccine.