‘Very positive’: Immunisation coverage rates in children hit record high

The number of children in Australia with full immunisation coverage has spiked, hitting a record high, according to new data.

In a significant milestone, the rate of vaccination among Indigenous children has also reached its highest-ever level, according to official data from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS).

The proportion of fully immunised five-year-olds reached 94.5 per cent, and 93.8 per cent of one-year-olds had also received all the vaccinations on the National Immunisation Program (NIP), the report released on Thursday showed.

“This is good news all round,” NCIRS director Kristine Macartney said.

The high vaccination rates were crucial to maintaining Australia’s status as being measles-free since 2014, particularly with other Western countries struggling to contain the disease, Professor Macartney aid.

“Europe’s got more measles than Africa at the moment,” she said.

The gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous babies (12 months old) has closed to just 0.7 per cent, the closest it has been, according to the latest figures detailed in the NCIRS 2017 annual report.

This is due to a dip in the rate of non-Indigenous coverage which peaked in June 2017.

“All the states and territories have been putting in a lot of effort to closing the gap,” report co-author Frank Beard said.

“It’s very positive when other ‘Close the Gap’ reports come out and there’s not much progress in other targets. Whereas in the immunisation areas, we’d say we’re pretty well on track.”

The aim of the immunisation program is simple, Professor Macartney said: “Keep people well, keep people healthy, keep people out of hospital.”

Despite a noisy minority of so-called “anti-vaxxers” who object to their children receiving vaccinations, most children have been immunised.

Dr Beard estimated about half of those who were not immunised were “anti-vaxxers”, while the other half face different barriers.

“The vaccinations are usually free but there can be fees from some providers,” Dr Beard said.

Other barriers include access issues, busy lifestyles, competing priorities and a lack of transport.

“A lot of those who are partially vaccinated are just overdue for a portion of them,” he said.

The challenge in Indigenous communities, Dr Beard said, has been to provide “culturally appropriate services”.

“A lot of this has been really grassroots work; engaging with parents with newborn Aboriginal babies so they know about the benefits of immunisation, so they can be linked with a clinic,” Dr Beard said.

A separate report audited the accuracy of child immunisation records in the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR), the record-keeping system that tracks vaccination rates.

This report, the first since 2001, found of those children who were listed as “overdue” for their immunisations, 14 per cent were actually up-to-date, meaning the AIR record was incorrect.

This is important, the authors said, because records held by the AIR are used to decide whether families are eligible for government assistance payments and when trying to enrol their children in childcare.

NSW had the most inaccurate records, at 29 per cent, compared to 3 per cent in Victoria.

The report attributes this to Victoria’s earlier adoption and strict enforcement of the ‘No Jab No Play’ policy which stops un-immunised children attending childcare.

The federal government’s separate ‘No Jab No Pay’ policy blocks parents from receiving family benefit payments if their children have not been vaccinated.

“For everybody’s benefit, that register needs to be really complete,” Professor Macartney said, noting an increase in the quality of data in the past few years.

“Absolutely anyone who gives a vaccine, or indeed anyone who gets a vaccine, should be ensuring they know the recording of that vaccine goes into the AIR.”