15 month old mis-vaccinated: what can she do? who can she tell?

[Guest guest]

Hi listmates

I just received this email from my sister. What, if anything, can the mother of this baby do in terms of preventing adverse reactions? Also, who can she tell about this stupid error-- VAERS? Another agency? A good lawyer? It's a pretty scary story... A reminder about how much burdon is on THE PATIENT to be responsible and vigilant and not trust the medical system...

Here's the email:

A woman I worked with just got a frantic phone call from a close friend of hers – the friend had taken her daughter to the health dept to get vaccinations and they screwed up. To determine which shots she needed, they used the little hand-written card that the doctor fills out (the card is just an FYI for parents to keep for their own records) instead of checking actual medical records which led them to believe that her daughter was missing vaccinations (she was not – the card was just incomplete). So, she ended up getting a shot of MMR at 15 months even though she had gotten the required dose at 12 months (even the crazy vaccination schedule only has kids getting 1 dose between 12 and 15 months) – she was given 5 shots in total, 2 of which were mistaken repeats (the other repeat was pneumococcal which is supposed to be done at 2/4/6 months and then again at 12-15. I told her to tell her friend to keep a close eye on her daughter to make sure that she’s not having any averse reactions – do you know of anything further that she should do? I feel badly because I don’t want to scare her anymore than she already is but I do want to make sure that she watches her daughter L Is there some place that she can report this? I know that there is a place to report averse reactions but do you know of any agency to which she should report the mistake even if her daughter ends up showing now outward signs of a problem?