Child vaccination rates are falling fast, with some regions barely reaching 80% |
Child vaccination has been one of Australia’s biggest success stories. Before the COVID pandemic, we hit the national target of 95% of one-year-olds fully vaccinated. Our child vaccination rates were among the best in the world.
Vaccination protects children from potentially severe illnesses such as measles, mumps and whooping cough. These diseases can cause severe pain, put children in hospital, risk their lives and leave them with ongoing health problems.
But Australia’s vaccine success is quickly slipping away. After the pandemic, the share of one-year-olds who are fully vaccinated kept falling. In some areas, it’s now barely 80%.
The risks are real. Whooping cough notifications are the highest since records began, 35 years ago. In the past week, there have been measles exposure sites in Sydney and regional New South Wales, including hospitals and a high-school hall.
We don’t want to end up like other countries. In America, dozens of people have been hospitalised with measles already this year, and Canada has lost its measles elimination status. An outbreak in London is putting children in hospital, and may force unvaccinated children to stay home from school.
One-year-old fully immunised babies have received vaccinations for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and pneumococcal disease.
High vaccination coverage is necessary to achieve herd immunity: the point where diseases find it hard to........