September 12, 2022
Alarm bells as immunisation system broken for Maori
The head of the National Immunisation Taskforce says the system is failing Maori.
Paediatrician Owen Sinclair says resources were diverted from the already poorly-served general immunisation programme to the Covid response, and they haven’t come back.
Immunisation rates are now at record lows, and for the high Maori population in South Auckland it’s just 30 percent – the same level that continued to the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa iwhich killed 70 children.
Dr Sinclair says the immunisation system relies on people coming to it, rather than resources being deployed to where the need is.
“It works extremely well for Asians in New Zealand, that population is defined by a wealthy, highly educated, very mobile population with lots of transport needs and they do very well. At the other end which Maori who have insecure housing, who have been victims of colonisation and have poverty and can’t get there, it fails miserably,” he says.
Dr Sinclair says his own Waitemata area is developing a Treaty-based system of taking immunisation out to those in need, which he hopes can be rolled out generally.