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A Northland family doctor warns parents that meningococcal disease is deadly and children need to be vaccinated.
Photo: 123RF
Free vaccinations will be offered to teens and children under four in Northland starting next Wednesday.
There have been 29 cases of the W strain of the disease this year, more than twice as much as last year.
Seven of these cases occurred in Northland, where MenW has killed three people since the middle of the year.
A Northland mother, Rowshae Albert, lost her daughter Alexis to the disease in July and urged other parents to vaccinate.
"I really do not want them to experience the same traumatic experience that I've had with my baby," she said.
Whangarei general practitioner Andrew Miller said the vaccine was effective and the children should receive it.
"When we had the meningitis C epidemic and we conducted exactly the same type of program in communities where general medicine helped, the number of cases of men has almost disappeared," he said.
"They are incredibly effective for those who have it.
"It's a deadly disease and if people have the chance to protect themselves against something that seems to hit in a very random way, often even fatally diagnosed early, that would be a pretty easy decision to make, I think," he said. said Dr. Miller. .
Northland is also home to an anti-vaccine pressure group that could hinder vaccination.
"They have to live with that if they decide not to do something that has been scientifically proven," Dr. Miller said.
"It's a risk that I would not take with my own kids, that's for sure."
Dr. Caroline McElnay, director of public health at the Ministry of Health, said Northland had successfully vaccinated against meningococcus C in 2007.
"We know they have the capacity to do it," she said.
The MenW organism can live in the throat without the wearer knowing it, said Dr. McElnay.
The carrier rate is highest among adolescents, but the group with the highest mortality risk is the under-5 age group.
Free vaccinations will be offered to persons between the ages of nine months to four years inclusive and to people aged 13 to 19 inclusive.
Mr. McElnay said that it was a two-pronged approach: attacking carriers while protecting the most vulnerable.
"We are really encouraging the community to seize this opportunity," she said.
McElnay said a door-to-door strategy could be used in smaller communities.
Although three people have died from MenW outside Northland, the vaccine is not funded outside the region and will not be deployed nationwide.
She said it was because cases in Northland were clustered, but sporadic in the rest of the country.
Dr. McElnay said worried parents could get it from their GP, but that would have a cost.
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