Charging parents a $7 fee could deter them from taking their children to the doctor for routine immunisations, doctors warn, creating a risk of disease outbreaks.
The concerns come as the Australian Medical Association’s national conference, held in Canberra over the weekend, called for urgent talks with the government to overhaul its plans for a $7 GP fee due to take effect from next July.
The AMA’s new national president, Brian Owler, said doctors were concerned the fee could deter some families from having their children immunised, particularly those on low incomes.
”We have been working hard to drive immunisation rates up. We don’t want to see barriers put up to those programs,” Associate Professor Owler said.
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Liz Marles said the fee was likely to have the greatest impact on parents who were reluctant to have their children immunised.
”We often put quite a bit of time into talking to these parents to present the evidence for immunisation, and look at what their concerns are,” she said.
”You’d worry [this group] wouldn’t even make it into the surgery if there’s a co-payment involved.”
She said a recent measles outbreak in western Sydney highlighted the risk to children who had not been immunised. ”If there are lower rates of immunisation, we know the diseases are out there and we could certainly see flare-ups,” she said.
Dr Marles said the fee could be a huge impost on large families who would have to pay $7 for every GP visit up to 10 visits for each child.
The current vaccination schedule requires six separate GP visits to receive vaccines in the first 18 months of a child’s life.
Dr Marles was also concerned elderly people could be discouraged from receiving flu vaccines, despite them having a much greater risk of developing serious illness compared with younger people.