By MARTIN JOHNSTON
South Auckland's "Third World" levels of infectious diseases are to be attacked using a region-wide computer database to lift low rates of vaccination.
Health Minister Annette King said yesterday that the project would start next financial year and would aim to increase levels of childhood immunisation, especially by tracking children.
This will be done by having all the region's health providers linked on a network.
The project would be one of the Government's main ways of dealing with the area's poor child health.
The proportion of New Zealand children who have received all their vaccinations has declined to an estimated 70 per cent. In Otara, the figure is 55 per cent.
Nearly a tenth of South Auckland's 95,000 residents aged under 15 have a disability or chronic illness.
Measles and whooping cough - for which vaccines are offered free - have increased in recent years.
Last year, the occurrence of measles in the region was four times the national rate, and a Manukau City Council health researcher, Joy Simpson, said some diseases were at Third World levels in South Auckland.
She said yesterday that setting up a regional immunisation register would help to improve the area's poor health as it would ensure vaccinations and health checkups for many of the children who needed attention but who now were not being seen.
It would help to overcome the problem that the area's population was highly mobile, meaning that even if children did receive attention, health services could not initiate followups if the family moved without notifying them.
In October, the Shipley Government took the first step towards the national immunisation register sought by many health groups when it gave $135,000 for an integrated child-health information system in Hamilton and Rotorua.
The pilot project, called kidZnet, enables information on immunisation and health checks to be entered on a database which health services can check to see if a child is receiving recommended care.
But the National-led Government rejected calls for a national database, and the Health Funding Authority urged regional health service providers to form their own networks to keep track of children.
Mrs King favours a national register, but said the Government had not yet made a decision on whether one would be set up.
South Auckland Health's child and youth services manager, Nettie Knetsch, said her company, which runs Middlemore Hospital, was about to start a pilot immunisation and children's health-check register with general practitioners and other child-health groups in Otara.
In this, pregnant women would be registered when they engage a midwife or other health workers to manage their birthcare.
Ms Knetsch said a region-wide register would require a large computer database to link all providers, and the system would have to be compatible with those already in use by GP groups and other practices.
Computer joining bid to boost kids' health
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