There are a number of vaccination issues that are topical for Northland at the moment including the current measles outbreak, meningitis W and falling vaccination rates generally. Let's look at these individually.
A recent article headlined that the current measles outbreak is the worst in a decade. I worked as a local GP through the 1997 measles outbreak and can recall overflowing waiting rooms full of ill children with the recognisable red rash.
If measles was just a temperature and a rash then why the concern? But we need to remember that a third of children with measles will get a complication such as pneumonia, 10 per cent will be hospitalised and one to three out of a thousand will actually die from measles. This is a serious condition.
Meningitis is another serious condition and this time last year Northland was in the early stages of a meningitis W outbreak in which three children died. Later in the year a vaccination campaign was started with Pharmac saying there weren't enough vaccines for everyone and so only older teenagers and young children could be vaccinated.