Australia lags behind US on childhood vaccinations

Australia had the sixth highest number of unvaccinated children among high-income countries in 2023, according to alarming new data released on Wednesday.

While the United States had 166,306 “zero-dose” children in the same year, in percentage terms, Australia’s 92.9 per cent coverage lagged behind the American 95.4 per cent, the UK’s 94.2 per cent, and was only marginally ahead of neighbouring New Zealand’s 92.5 per cent.

The fresh statistics will stoke rising concern about a steady decline in childhood vaccination rates since the Covid-19 pandemic, which have dropped below the coverage needed to maintain herd immunity from some diseases.

The analysis, conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, was published by the Lancet and showed 20,938 Australian children had not received any vaccinations in 2023.

The data analysis, extracted from the 2023 Global Burden of Disease study, backs recent findings from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) showing a widespread decline in immunisations for a range of diseases since 2020.

The NCIRS information included vaccines for a wide range of diseases including whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, hepatitis B, measles, mumps and rubella.

Experts have warned that deaths are inevitable if Australia does not do more to reverse the fall in vaccination rates, the ABC reported in May.

In a speech earlier this month to launch Australia’s new National Immunisation Strategy, Health Minister Mark Butler praised the program’s success so far in funding 31 vaccines against 18 diseases but acknowledged childhood vaccination rates “are trending in exactly the wrong direction and must be turned around.”

Most communities were now seeing a vaccination rate below the 95 per cent rate for herd immunity, with some areas witnessing as few as 75 per cent of children are fully vaccinated against deadly and preventable diseases like measles, diphtheria and polio.

Mr Butler said the decline had been steady since Covid-19 hit in 2020 due to a mix of “acceptance issues, concerns around safety, vaccine fatigue and reduced confidence in the vaccination system” as well as access issues.

It would not be an easy task to boost rates up to 95 per cent in the very diverse range of communities falling behind, from the hinterlands around Byron Bay or Noosa and the Gold Coast to Margaret River in WA and central Adelaide or the outback South Australia.

“The strategy is going to pave new ways or pave the way to address misinformation and the rise we’ve seen across the community in vaccine hesitancy,” he said.

“We know that people’s trust in vaccination, medicine and science has been impacted in recent years by growing scepticism but also importantly by a proliferation of false and misleading information.”

Mr Butler gave a nod to the global trends mirrored in Australia, and highlighted in Wednesday’s Lancet report, which said vaccination coverage worldwide had stalled in recent decades, leaving millions of children at risk for deadly diseases.

Since 2010, progress has stalled or reversed in many countries, with measles vaccination declining in 100 of 204 countries between 2010 and 2019, the report said.

In 21 of 36 high-income countries there were falls in coverage for at least one vaccine dose against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio, or tuberculosis.

The pandemic further exacerbated the challenges to childhood vaccination coverage, resulting in an estimated 15.7 million children in 2023 who had received no doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine in their first year of life.

More than half were living in just eight countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa (53 per cent) and South Asia (13 per cent).

“Despite the monumental efforts of the past 50 years, progress has been far from universal. Large numbers of children remain under- and un-vaccinated”, said senior study author Dr Jonathan Mosser from the IHME.

“Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available, but persistent global inequalities, challenges from the COVID pandemic, and the growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress.”