On 1 January, the NHS announced it would be including a chickenpox vaccine in the bundle of inoculations given to one-year-olds, henceforth known as the MMRV, where V stands for varicella. Most people in my circle reacted badly to this news, having become vaccine sceptics after the overselling of the Covid jabs, but not me. Twenty years ago I lobbied the government to do just this. I don’t think people realise how dangerous chicken-pox can be – and not just for adults.
Two days after my son Ludo was born, Caroline discovered a spot on her chest that her mum quickly diagnosed as chickenpox. That wasn’t great for Caroline, who began to feel unwell, but it was potentially deadly for Ludo, because there was a chance she’d passed on the virus to him via her placenta in the seven-day window between first becoming infected and producing antibodies. Newborns don’t have fully developed immune systems, so if she’d passed on the virus in that window there was a 1 to 5 per cent mortality risk, rising to 20 to 30 per cent if it wasn’t treated.
They were both admitted to University College Hospital and placed in an isolated room in paediatrics, surrounded by seriously ill children. Not where you want to be straight after giving birth. Caroline felt terrible about not being at home with Sasha, our 18-month-old daughter, whom she’d also infected with varicella. To make matters worse, the hospital was about to close for refurbishment and didn’t have any clean linen for the bed, so Caroline had to lie on a bare mattress while Ludo wailed in the cot beside her. It was like the opening scene in a zombie movie.
The only treatment the hospital offered was an antiviral drug called Acyclovir, which was administered intravenously. The problem was, Ludo’s needle-thin veins couldn’t accommodate a cannula for long, so the nurses kept having to search for fresh ones. At one point, they found a vein in his foot but didn’t get the line in properly, and the Acyclovir ended up being squeezed into his baby trotter. That, in turn, meant flushing out the alkaline substance lest it cause permanent damage, then bandaging up his foot for ten days, and to prevent infection antibiotics had to be mixed in with the antivirals. We seemed to be caught in a doom spiral: whatever could go wrong did go wrong.
I spent most of the time researching neonatal varicella on Google and discovered a drug called Vzig. Made from blood, it contains immunoglobulin– antibodies – that protect against the chickenpox virus. In US hospitals, I learned, it’s routinely given to newborns at risk of becoming infected, but not in British ones. I decided Ludo had to have this and started lobbying his consultant to give it to him. But he refused. Varicella typically has a 21-day incubation period and he didn’t want to administer this ‘very expensive’ drug unless he was 100 per cent sure Ludo had been infected.
Caroline had to lie on a bare mattress while Ludo wailed in the cot beside her
By ‘very expensive’ he meant £200, but, of course, my offers to pay for it were met with furrowed-browed disapproval. Didn’t I realise you can’t pay for medical treatment in the NHS? Paying is against the rules, unless it’s for access to wifi that doesn’t work or some disgusting white-bread sandwich in the hospital shop. So I just argued with him relentlessly, pointing out that £200 might sound like a lot but it could be the difference between life and death for my son, and if we waited until he became infected it might be too late. Pumping Acyclovir into his foot certainly wasn’t going to save him. If he didn’t get the Vzig, and he developed chickenpox, his chances of dying were between 20 and 30 per cent.
Eventually I wore the consultant down and he gave Ludo the miracle drug. Shortly afterwards, we were sent home, where we waited to see if our newborn got ill. Three weeks passed and we gave him what we hoped was the final inspection, only to find a suspicious-looking spot on his bum. It was back to hospital, where it was confirmed: he had chickenpox. Anothercourse of Acyclovir was administered – more cannulas, more screams – and he was watched like a hawk to see if his temperature started ‘spiking’. It did, briefly, but then subsided, which I attributed to the Vzig doing its job. After four of the most stressful days of my life, we were discharged.
So yes, add a V to the MMR. The two drugs the NHS is using are about as safe as vaccines get, and if it spares a few hundred families a year the ordeal we went through, it’ll be worth the expense. And one more thing: if you’re trying to conceive and you haven’t had chickenpox yet, get vaccinated beforehand. This is a negligible risk worth paying to avoid.
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