Patient's question:
A 2-year-5-month-old child received a hepatitis A vaccine under anesthesia this afternoon, but after returning home, they discovered that the expiration date on the vaccine package was 2011.12.16. I am very worried about whether an accident might occur. It was administered at the local health prevention station.Doctor's answer:
The hepatitis A vaccine is primarily used to prevent children from contracting hepatitis A, one of the more important vaccines in the children's automatic immunization program. It can be divided into inactivated vaccines and attenuated vaccines, with the former being more stable and the latter being significantly cheaper. For vaccine preparations, it is strictly prohibited to use expired vaccines to vaccinate children to prevent potential harmful side effects. Of course, when setting the validity period of vaccines, it is generally extended slightly in advance to prevent a small number of vaccines from expiring prematurely or losing effectiveness before their expiration date. If vaccines that are just expired or close to expiration are used, although the probability of causing serious consequences is very low, their automatic immunization effect is highly unreliable.