Parents urged to get children immunised against measles

30 June 2011

Parents urged to get children immunised as measles outbreak continues

As the measles outbreak continues in Hawke’s Bay, schools and early childhood centres, that have a measles case reported, will be asked by Public Health to exclude any child not immunised or who can’t produce an up-to-date immunisation certificate to help prevent the virus spreading.

Hawke’s Bay District Health Board medical officer of health Lester Calder said a recent measles case at Henry Hill School, Napier highlighted the importance of ensuring immunisation certificates were up-to-date and copied to schools or childhood centre management as 48 percent of the school roll had to be excluded until immunisation records could be produced. This number has now reduced to seven percent of children being excluded.

Dr Calder said this was the third school which had to exclude pupils while they awaited immunisation certificates.

“Excluding children caused family disruption often impacting on parents’ ability to work and it could so easily be prevented by ensuring children’s immunisations were up-to-date and their immunisation record was copied to the school or childcare centre.

“This is the best protection against inconvenience and it’s preventable,” Dr Calder said.

The district health board is waiting for final genotyping to come back to prove all cases were linked to an initial case in Auckland, however, genotype information received so far suggested all the cases were linked.

The high level of immunity in Hawke’s Bay had prevented a much greater epidemic but there had been clusters in Flaxmere, Hastings, Napier and Maraekakaho – highlighting how contagious this virus was, Dr Calder said.

If a measles case was reported at a school or childcare centre children not immunised or who didn’t have an immunisation certificate, as part of their school record, would be excluded from school for two weeks until an immunisation certificate was produced. If there was a further case children not immunised or without an immunisation certificate would be excluded for a further two weeks.

Parents could obtain copies of immunisation certificates from their GP, or parents should see their GP or Practice Nurse if they needed to have their child vaccinated.

Since April twenty five cases of the highly contagious virus have been reported in Hawke’s Bay and of those four including one adult have been hospitalised.
ENDS

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