Feature on Vaccinations - Radio National - Australia

The home immunisation programme was seen as lifting a significant barrier to raising poor immunisation rates in Australia. It was an opportunity for parents to establish communication with health workers to ask questions & dissolve fears around vaccinations. Those parents who registered their children at birth received written reminders when immunisations were due or overdue & were then prompted by phonecall with excellent results. This immunisation programme was featured on The Heatlh Report, broadcast by Radio National on Monday at 830am, repeated Monday evening at 830pm & Tuesday at 130am. Radio National is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's national radio network of ideas.

Health, Children, Rights

The development of the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR) enabled health workers to target geographic areas where significant numbers of children were not up to date with immunisation. These children were often disadvantaged & it came down to an issue of access. A research nurse was hired to provide & document a service whereby those families were written to & invited to take part in a service that would be provided to them; that of in-home immunisation. They were then prompted by phonecall. The research nurse was an experienced paediatric nurse who was also a trained immuniser. She "made contact with the families, verified that the child was indeed not immunised & then offered to visit them in their home appropriately equipped with resuscitation equipment & so forth & provide immunisation to that child, at a time that suited the parent". The focus was on "the first milestone" which refers to 2 sets of immunisations for 9 & 16 month olds; the DPT, HIB & oral polio given at 2, 4 & 6 months & then the MMR vaccination due at 12 months or 1 year old. This brought the children up to speed on measles vaccinations & the first round of other vaccinations. The message in this programme is that countries need to be more aggressive in how they approach immunisation & develop more creative ways to deliver immunisation to all children.