Mistrust A Factor As Childhood Vaccination Rates Fall, Campaign Aims ‘To Empower Whānau’

Nine to
Noon

Health New Zealand has launched the second
phase of its childhood immunisation campaign aimed at
tackling the slump in the number of vaccinations
post-Covid.

Called Story to Tell, the campaign
involves a song by Betty-Anne that’s inspired by the
whānau’s personal stories.

Latest statistics show
childhood vaccination rates were as low as 63 percent
coverage in 2022, Health NZ South Island’s regional clinical
director of public health medicine Dr Ramon Pink told
Nine to Noon.

Now the overall coverage for the
Māori population was just over 71 percent, although there
was some regional variation and that compared to New
Zealand’s overall rate of 83 percent, he said.

Before
Covid childhood immunisation rates were in the high 80s, and
the numbers were also higher for Māori at this time, he
said.

“So we’ve got some work to do and I think that’s
why this campaign is really important.”

Last year
health providers raised concerns that a growing number of
families living in communities most vulnerable to infectious
disease outbreaks were refusing
to have their children vaccinated.

Immunisation
experts feared the trend would make it impossible to reach
the government’s target of 95 percent coverage by
2030.

Pink said they were still working to understand
why childhood vaccination rates had dropped, but mistrust
contributed to those lower figures.

Other issues
included priorities for families who were struggling, he
said.

“Getting your priorities right, you know cost of
living, food on table, keeping warm, you know some of those
basic elements, they do take precedence over something like
this.”

Health staff understood this and knew that it
needed to be taken into consideration, he said.

It was
also difficult to get in to see GPs these days and good
primary healthcare was pivotal to any discussion about
vaccination, he said.

“And if we’re not able to get
there [to a GP] as often as we need to that does have an
impact.”

Others were very clear that they had made
their decision not to vaccinate their children and did not
want to engage, he said.

“So navigating all of those
things, developing a trust enhancing campaign which I think
this campaign has the elements of is really important,
letting people see themselves in it with all of those
challenges I’ve just described, seeing a story, seeing
themselves in that story is really important.”

Pink
said the campaign started when there was a measles outbreak
last year and whānau began to tell their stories about
immunisation.

“I really admire the courage of whānau
in doing this, you know talking about not immunising their
first child and then delaying second child and then seen,
having lived experience of one of their children with
measles,” he said.

“Then deciding okay I need to do
this in a timely way, I need to do the vaccines as the
schedule is laid out in front of me.”

People often did
not realise that measles could be a very serious disease, he
said.

Under the National Childhood Immunisation
Schedule, the MMR vaccine is given at 12 and 15
months.

Young adults born from the mid-1990s and early
2000s were the most at risk of catching measles due to
missed vaccinations, along with pre-schoolers born since
Covid-19, due to access problems and rising vaccine
hesitancy.

Another story revolved around someone who
had immunodeficiency which meant he did not have the natural
protection that immunisation boosts.

“So having
conversations with whānau about that vulnerability and
encouraging immunisation in that setting is also really
important.”

As people see themselves in those stories
it starts a conversation and leads them to seek advice from
those they trust, he said.

Putting the information
into a song, as Betty-Anne had, was another way to get the
message across, he said.

“We’re wanting to empower
whānau, we’re wanting to say ‘what’s your story’ and let
that conversation start so they can eventually get to a
place where they can make their
decisions.”

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