"Let's say I'm looking at somebody who has come from the Philippines, Ukraine or Japan, and they don't remember how many shots of BCG they got, or when they got the BCG. I can easily look up the country policy and say 'OK, in all likelihood this person got the vaccine too many times.' Therefore I probably shouldn't rely too much on the skin test and I could ask for a blood test, which is unaffected by BCG," Pai said.So says Dr. Madhukar Pai, a co-author of the BCG World Atlas. They produced a study paper on their work and they have a website where you can check out your BCG status.
Looking at the map..apart from the USA it appears that everybody has been BCG vaccinated. To test the veracity of their claims I clicked on Australia
Which year was vaccination introduced? 1950sThat didnt make sense as that was the period during which I was growing up and I had never heard of BCG. So I did some digging around and guess what..
Year BCG stopped? mid 1980s
In Australia, the broad-based BCG vaccination program originated at a time when the epidemiological circumstances of tuberculosis (TB) were quite different. Initially in 1948, vaccination targeted health workers, Aboriginal people and close contacts of active cases, especially children. In the 1950s the program was expanded to include all Australian school children except those from New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory . This policy was discontinued in the mid-1980s (1991 in the Northern Territory) in favour of a more selective approach. The change occurred because of the low prevalence of TB in our community and concerns about the balance between the benefits and the risks.So even in Australia there is a large group who have been BCG vaccinated...probably forgot about it..come to think of it we were always getting jabs for this and that.
We should all be using IGRA.
