You have to realize that effectiveness depends on starting the medication early, preferably within 24 hours. That means the patient must get to the doctor fast, the doctor has to recognize the illness and write the prescription, and the parent must quickly obtain the medicine and start to administer it. Of course, to a parent who must stay home from work with the child, cutting a full day off the length of the illness may be worth it. The child who has caught chickenpox from another family member, someone in the same household, is frequently sicker not in a life-threatening sense, but certainly in terms of discomfort and the drug can help. Aside from those special instances, says Murphy, This is a medical-care issue, a decision to be made by the physician.
Most children get over chickenpox without any complications.
Acyclovir appears to be a fairly safe drug. We must remember, though, that all drugs have side effects. The AAP, which issued a policy statement on the question several months after FDA's approval of the drug, concurs, stating that oral acyclovir is not recommended routinely for treating uncomplicated varicella-zoster infections in otherwise healthy children. The promise of a vaccine has been with us for at least 15 years, since the development in the mid-1970s of a Japanese vaccine. There have been multiple studies and a number of clinical trials in Japan, in the United States, and in other countries, but none have met FDA criteria for vaccine licensing.