Page 905 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 22 March 2017
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is recommended for all Australian children, with the first dose of pertussis containing vaccine given from six to eight weeks of age, followed by doses at four and six months, a booster from 3½ to four years of age and a further booster at 12 to 17.
Here in the ACT, though, we also have the ante-natal pertussis vaccination program which vaccinates pregnant women in their third trimester for free. This program started in the ACT in April 2015 just one month after the recommendation was included in the Australian immunisation handbook. The government provides the vaccine to be administered at 28 weeks gestation or as soon as possible afterwards. This is because vaccination during pregnancy has been shown to be effective in preventing pertussis disease in newborn infants by the transfer of protection from mother to the unborn child. I am pleased to say that to date nearly 9,000 pertussis vaccines have been distributed to general practices and hospital maternity units and data returned indicates that approximately 76 per cent of pregnant women received the pertussis vaccine in 2006 through this program.
In relation to the federal government’s no jab no play policy, the Prime Minister, as I have indicated, has written to the Chief Minister requesting discussion on this issue at the COAG first ministers meeting later this year. The Prime Minister has called for a consistent national approach to this issue, which the ACT supports. Later this week I will have an opportunity to raise this with the new federal health minister, Greg Hunt, during our health ministers meeting in Melbourne, and I look forward to that discussion, as do my state and territory colleagues.
We are supportive of no jab no play in principle and certainly welcome any conversation about what can be done to ensure that more children are vaccinated in our community. The ACT has had legislation in place since 1994 requiring parents to provide copies of their child’s immunisation record when enrolling their child into child care, preschool or school. This allows unimmunised children to be excluded if a vaccine preventable disease occurs at the centre or school. If the Chief Health Officer believes on reasonable grounds that there is a significant risk to public health from an occurrence of a vaccine preventable disease at a school or childcare centre or in the community close by, the Chief Health Officer may give a written direction to exclude all non-immunised children from the school and centre.
I note that this issue has become a topic of conversation, which is welcome. Again it encourages us to have a conversation about the importance of vaccinations. It is important also to note that the Prime Minister has called for a national approach. I very much look forward to hearing from the commonwealth health minister and also, through the Chief Minister, from the Prime Minister about what the commonwealth has in mind regarding this national approach. We hope that it will enable us to consider all the implementation issues that will come into consideration in this policy.
Most notably I want to indicate that there are some groups in our community who, through reasons of disadvantage or vulnerability, or perhaps newness to Australia and unfamiliarity with English, simply do not have access to or are not aware of our immunisation program. To the extent that we do not want to further marginalise already disadvantaged groups, this national approach—certainly the approach we will take here—must ensure that we see this as an opportunity to encourage immunisation
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