Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Meningococcal B vaccination

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:49): (1926) I completely agree with Ms Maxwell. It is something that I have been addressing in meeting with the community.

My matter is also for the Minister for Health, and it relates to a very serious issue—a meningococcal immunisation program. In South Australia they have been running what started off as a pilot program amongst children. They were identifying the numbers of kids that were being infected. In 2018 it was introduced first there through a government immunisation and awareness campaign, and since that time because it has been so successful it has been rolled out to include adolescents from 15 to 20.

Now, this has been a very effective campaign in South Australia. It really is a terrible disease. Meningococcal can cause some very severe health outcomes, including brain damage, and very serious issues around deafness or loss of limbs. People can die from it—babies can die. It is something that we could be looking at very effectively, but Victoria is not doing that. They have had a 60 per cent reduction in cases for infants and a 73 per cent drop for adolescents when they have gone on and done this vaccination campaign and awareness program relating to meningococcal B.

I would like the Victorian government to look to the South Australian program—look at those outstanding results that they have achieved, with 92 per cent effectiveness in infants and almost 100 per cent effectiveness, I understand, in adolescents—look at the meningococcal B issue here in Victoria, and consider that Victoria also take up a similar vaccination program in infants and adolescents so that we can reduce these numbers and prevent these terrible health outcomes, as I have outlined, from being in our community with infants, babies and adolescents. It is a very serious issue and I hope that the government will look at this as a matter of priority.