Immunise your kids, urges board

Vaccinate your children, says Northland District Health Board.

Northland is thought to have one of the highest rates of parents who don't want their infants immunised, and the health board bringing in outside help to tackle the issue.

At last week's Northland District Health Board meeting chief executive Nick Chamberlain said about 9 per cent of parents in the region were declining to immunise their children. "We always know that we're going to have a difficult challenge here."

It came after Northland ranked second worst in the country for the immunisation health target in the January-March quarter. Data released by the Ministry of Health showed 87 per cent of 8-month-olds had their primary course of immunisation at six weeks, three months and five months on time. The target was 95 per cent.

Mr Chamberlain said he was looking at bringing in experts from other health boards for a couple of days, though did not say when. They would look at the processes around immunisation in Northland and areas that could be improved.

An important part of improving the rate of immunisation may be about how parents are asked the questions by the health practitioner, Dr Chamberlain said.

If they were persistent or asked questions in a different manner they may be able to convince a parent to immunise their infant, he said.

Board member Greg Gent said it was important that if parents said no to the immunisations, it was a "well informed" no.

Dr Chamberlain said the low rate of immunisation was largely because parents were choosing not to, but partially because of the transient nature of the Northland population.

No Forced Vaccines spokeswoman Katherine Smith said she was in favour of parents' rights to make whatever vaccination decision they thought were appropriate for their children, without coercion.

"If anything goes wrong after vaccination it is parents and children who have to live with the consequences," Ms Smith said.