Anti-vaxxers: ‘No jab, no classroom’ during outbreaks

UNVACCINATED high school students will be banned from class during disease outbreaks under a crackdown on vaccine refusers.

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UNVACCINATED high school students will be banned from class during disease outbreaks under a crackdown on vaccine refusers.

Sweeping reforms by NSW Health will also make it tougher for parents to claim conscientious objection for childcare and parents of high school students compelled to provide details of their child’s vaccination status.

Public health officers have the power to exclude unvaccinated children from childcare care and primary school during outbreaks of diseases like measles but this will be expanded to high schools.

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Unvaccinated children will also be banned from childcare and school for up to two weeks if they come into contact with a child suffering a vaccine-preventable disease — even if they aren’t sick themselves.

Without a vaccination students could find themselves banned from the classroom. Picture: iStock

Anti-vaxxers will also find it harder to claim “conscientious objection” to vaccination when enrolling their child in daycare.

While this law is being strengthened, it remains weaker than in Queensland and Victoria where conscientious objection has been abolished.

NSW Health Director Communicable Diseases Dr Vicky Sheppeard said the objection was not being scrapped for fear of “exacerbating the disadvantage some of those children may have”.

There are also concerns it would lead to a rise in rogue childcare centres catering only to unvaccinated children which AMA NSW President Brad Frankum labelled as “dangerous”.

“That’s always the danger with prohibition that you drive people underground and having a whole preschool unvaccinated is a highly dangerous situation,” he said.

Prof Frankum backed the exclusion of unvaccinated children but raised concerns anti-vaxxers would lie about their child being in contact with a sick peer.

“I see compliance problems with it but in theory we should do everything we can to protect as many kids as we can from vaccine preventable disease,” he said.

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He expects conscientious objection to be dropped as NSW “moves towards” interstate models.

Dr Sheppeard said the requirements for claiming conscientious objection will be strengthened and this could see parents having to renew their objection with their GP annually.

The push comes as health authorities announced that 23 children died needlessly in the past decade because they missed out on the vaccines that could have saved their lives.

The Child Death Review looked at a total of 54 children who died from vaccine preventable diseases in NSW from 2015 to 2014. The report found almost half of the deaths were avoidable had the children been fully vaccinated against the diseases in question.

Dr Kristine Macartney, Deputy Director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance said the main vaccine preventable diseases responsible for the deaths were influenza, which killed 15 children; meningococcal which killed 12; pneumococcal was responsible for 16 deaths and whooping cough claimed the lives of four babies.

Eight of the meningococcal deaths occurred before the vaccine for the ‘B strain’ became available at the end of 2013.

NSW Secondary Principal’s Council President Chris Presland criticised the school plans for dumping parent’s responsibilities onto schools.

“So many things keep getting lumbered onto schools because parents can’t or won’t deal with things,” he said.

He said schools would unfairly “bear the brunt of parent’s frustration” if an unvaccinated child was excluded.

The changes follow a review of public health legislation and will be put to parliament but have been signed off by Health Minister Jillian Skinner.

Last year 14 per cent of high school students did not have their Year 7 whooping cough booster while six per cent of the state’s children are not fully vaccinated for measles at five-years-old.

Dr Sheppard said there were measles outbreaks in NSW in 2006, 2012 and 2011 and high school children were more likely to be affected.

Originally published as Anti-vaxxers: ‘No jab, no classroom’ during outbreaks