Sunshine Coast Medicare Local says it applauds a Federal Government crackdown on parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
The Prime Minister this week confirmed up to $15,000 in childcare rebates and other payments will be stripped from families who refuse to vaccinate their children.
Medicare Local chairman Peter Dobson said for about the past 20 years, he had noticed a complacency in the region to vaccinate against serious diseases.
He said the scheme would not convince every conscientious objector but it was a significant step forward.
“This lifts the ante a little bit. It makes it a much more serious proposition for families and a lot of families are struggling out there to put food on the table, so to take away, potentially take away, significant Commonwealth payments and tying it to vaccinations really lifts the ante,” he said.
“We need to get to a level where herd immunity works. That … is usually up above the 90th percentile for vaccinations and if we can get there our communities will cope with a small number of people that are just absolutely adamant that no matter what it’s going to cost them physically or mentally they will not have their children vaccinated.”
Dr Andrew Langley from the Public Health Unit said the Sunshine Coast/Gympie region still had one of the lowest child immunisation rates in Australia.
He said 1,400 children between one and five years of age were not protected from serious diseases.
“The conscientious objector rate last year when a study was done was 7.1 per cent of the relevant age groups of children,” he said.
“That’s very high, across Australia it’s a little more than 1.7 per cent.
“We’ll have to wait and see what impact it [the Federal Government crackdown] has on immunisation rates.
“Here on the Sunshine Coast we’ve only got 88 per cent of one-year-old children vaccinated, 90 per cent of two-year-old children and 89 per cent of five-year-old children.”