Vaccination

The childhood immunisation schedule, by age

Vaccination schedules can look intimidating on paper — a long list of names, doses and ages. In practice, it comes down to a handful of visits at predictable points, each protecting against a specific set of diseases before a child is old enough to be exposed to them.

Vaccines work by giving the immune system a safe preview of a disease, so it can respond quickly if the real thing turns up later. Timing matters because a newborn's immune system is still developing, and because some diseases are far more dangerous in the first months and years of life than they are later on. That's why the schedule front-loads several vaccines into the first year rather than spreading them evenly across childhood.

Birth to six weeks

The first vaccines are usually given at birth, before a newborn even leaves the hospital or clinic, protecting against tuberculosis, polio and hepatitis B — three diseases a newborn can be exposed to immediately. A first round of oral polio drops is often given at this point as well.

Six, ten and fourteen weeks

This is the busiest stretch of the schedule. Across these three visits, spaced roughly a month apart, a child typically receives combination vaccines covering diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and polio, along with rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines where they're part of the schedule followed. Doses are spread out rather than combined into one because the immune system needs time between doses to build a full response — and because several of these vaccines need more than one dose to reach full protection.

Six to nine months

A first dose of measles-containing vaccine is usually given around nine months, sometimes with a vitamin A supplement alongside it in some schedules. Some children also receive a typhoid vaccine in this window.

Twelve to eighteen months

This is where booster doses start: a second dose of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), boosters for DPT and polio, and chickenpox and hepatitis A vaccines where they're included. Boosters exist because protection from the first round of doses can fade with time — a booster is what makes it durable through early childhood.

Four to six years

A second set of boosters — typically DPT and polio again — is given before school starts, timed to cover the years when a child is in close daily contact with large groups of other children for the first time.

Why the exact schedule is worth confirming directly

The outline above covers the shape of a typical schedule, but the specific vaccines offered, their timing, and which are considered routine versus optional can vary by country, by year, and by a child's individual health history. Rather than relying on a printed schedule that may be out of date, the most reliable approach is to bring your child's vaccination record to a checkup and have it reviewed directly — catching a missed or delayed dose early is far simpler than trying to reconstruct a schedule later.

This is also where a doctor a parent trusts makes a real difference. Vaccination is rarely a single event — it's a running record kept and checked over several years, which is why a consistent point of care matters as much as any individual dose.