More than a third of Queensland students missed free vaccinations provided through state schools last year, prompting Queensland Health to urge parents to take advantage of the service.
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Year 7 students will soon be lining up for a vaccine giving them immunity from diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
They are also offered a vaccine guarding against human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer, while year 10 children are scheduled to get the meningococcal ACWY vaccine.
Queensland Health data show up to 35 per cent of students missed the free jabs in 2018, a figure Dr Alun Richards, the medical director of the organisation's immunisation program, hopes to reduce this year.
“This is the easiest way to get your child vaccinated," he said.
"There’s health professionals with their kids. Their kids are with their friends, which is often when they feel more comfortable compared to being with their parents in a GP practice."
He acknowledged there were a number of legitimate reasons why some students couldn’t be vaccinated at schools, and said at least some of the shortfall was made up by people later taking their children to the GP themselves.
“Sometimes there’s reasons it couldn’t be done in a school setting, for example if the child was sick or if parents didn’t fill out their consent forms,” he said
“In those cases students can still access those vaccinations for free from their GP. We provide the vaccine to GPs for free so they can do follow-up vaccinations.”
In 2018, 79 per cent of year 7 students received the whooping cough vaccine, 67 per cent completed the course of the HPV vaccine, and 64 per cent of year 10 students received a dose of the meningococcal jab.
Queensland has a target vaccination rate of 85 per cent for these vaccines, which Dr Richards said was because of medical advice suggesting that was an achievable target that provided so-called “herd” immunity for those diseases.
In recent years there has been a small but vocal anti-vaccination movement in Australia inspired in part by the work of disgraced former British doctor Andrew Wakefield, which has seen vaccination rates fall in some parts of the country.
But Dr Richards said he didn’t believe anti-vaxxers were significantly affecting vaccination rates in Queensland.
“The proportion of the population who aren’t up to date with their vaccines is low, but the number of people who actually don’t believe vaccines are helpful is very much lower,” he said.
“We know for instance for one, two and five-year-olds, the immunisation rates are approaching 95 per cent.
“But even among those people who aren’t fully immunised, a large proportion are supportive of immunisation, it’s just been delayed for a variety of reasons.”
Queensland Health said the rate of vaccinations in state schools had remained steady over the past two years.
The HPV vaccine was developed by a University of Queensland team led by Professor Ian Frazer, and immunises boys and girls against the human papillomavirus.
The meningococcal ACWY vaccine guards against the most common strains of meningococcal, which can cause severe infections including meningitis - severe swelling of the tissues around the brain, which can be fatal if not urgently treated.
