Health authorities are hoping to apply lessons learned during the Covid-19 vaccination rollout to boost the country's faltering childhood immunisation programme.
Immunisation Advisory Centre director Nikki Turner. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Rates have been on the decline since 2017 and have taken a further hit during the pandemic.
The Ministry of Health aims for 95 percent of children to be fully vaccinated at the milestone ages of - eight months, 24 months and five years old.
But since December 2019, the rate at eight months, for example, has dropped from just over 90 percent (90.3) to 87.1 percent and at 24 months from almost 91 percent (90.8) percent to 85.2 percent.
Immunisation Advisory Centre director Nikki Turner said it was important children got their shots when they were due.
"If they don't get them on time then they are at risk of vaccine-preventable disease and we are particularly concerned about whooping cough which does resurge. The second big challenge we've got is measles coverage."
Dr Turner said Covid-19 had disrupted the childhood immunisation programme, but also offered clues about how to make up that ground.
"We've learned a lot from Covid around engaging local services that work with local communities.
"We need to take these learnings forward and work closely with our communities and our primary care services to make sure children and pregnant women are enrolled in primary care.
"That people know about them and offer them services and reach out to them through our communities when they are late or getting lost."
Taranaki iwi health provider Tui Ora clinical nurse leader Robyn Taylor works on the vaccine frontline.
"We are getting some children coming in but it's nowhere near like it used to be, so there's a lot more overdue children which is a concern once the borders open and we're going to have a measles outbreak which is almost like not if but when."
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the rate for Taranaki Maori infants being fully immunised at eight months has dropped from 80 percent to 69 percent.
The rate for the general population has declined three percent to 89 percent.
Tui Ora clinical nurse leader Robyn Taylor. Photo: Robin Martin
Taylor said Covid-19 explained the slide.
"When we were in lockdowns proper lockdowns obviously people weren't going anywhere.
"I think there's been a huge focus on Covid and I think it's just people not wanting to take their children out and about especially at the moment while there is Omicron everywhere."
She said in response Tui Ora was now offering childhood vaccines alongside the Pfizer jab.
Taranaki Covid-19 vaccine rollout boss Bevan Clayton-Smith said collaboration between agencies had been key to the province achieving 93 percent double dose coverage and the strategy needed to be adopted across the board.
"Once you've got a common purpose and everyone understands what we're doing it and how we're doing it together and how we leverage off how we've done that to date then I think that makes the job easier rather than returning to perhaps I wouldn't say a siloed approach but to traditional ways of working prior to Covid."
Clayton-Smith said no infant should be at risk of getting whooping cough.
"And then experience potential life long episodes of chest infections and upper and lower respiratory tract infections through scarring of the lungs.
"No child deserves that start in life, so everything we can do and everything parents can do and caregivers can do to protect their children it's only got to be a good thing."
Taranaki Covid-19 vaccine rollout boss Bevan Clayton-Smith. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
As part of the new strategy, a dozen MMR vaccines - for measles, mumps and rubella - have been given at Covid-19 clinics in Taranaki so far.
But there were no takers during a drive-through clinic in Waitara at the weekend.
All 108 jabs delivered were for Covid-19 only.
It is estimated 5000 people living in Taranaki aged between 15 and 30 have missed getting their childhood measles vaccination.
