Explaining the impacts on others can boost vaccination rates: study

AUSTRALIA could lift its immunisation rates by emphasising the impact of people’s inaction on babies, pregnant women and the elderly, a leading UK ethicist says.

AUSTRALIA could lift its immunisation rates by emphasising the impact of people’s inaction on babies, pregnant women and the elderly, a leading UK ethicist says.

Oxford University’s Professor Julian Savulescu, who works at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute for four months a year, believes focusing on how people’s behaviour could negatively affect vulnerable members of the community could entice more people to get vaccinated.

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When people are told how their inaction may affect the vulnerable, they are more likely to change their behaviour.

The latest data from the Australian Immunisation Register shows 94.7 per cent of five-year-olds are immunised, still short of the 95 per cent target needed to achieve herd immunity.

In a new research paper examining how our choices will affect others, people were asked how willing they were to contain an infectious disease and given information about how their behaviour would impact others.

Prof Savulescu said when people were told how their inaction may affect the vulnerable, they were more likely to change their behaviour.

NEW FLU VACCINE A CUT ABOVE

THE two new flu vaccines being offered to three million Australians aged 65 and over are expected to boost protection by around 25 per cent compared to the standard jabs.

After a horror influenza season last year, the federal government decided to fund the vaccines for the elderly, who are particularly at risk of severe and deadly ­complications.

The National Centre for Immunisation Research’s Dr Sarah Sheridan wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia today that the standard vaccines on average reduce the risk of influenza by 40-50 per cent.

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It’s expected the new vaccines should raise the effectiveness to 55-63 per cent.

One of the vaccines has a higher dose of the vaccine for each strain and the other has an adjuvant that boosts the ­immune response.

Last year, almost a quarter of reported flu cases were in people aged 65 and over and this age group also made up more than 90 per cent of the 1100 flu related deaths.