Baby boomers and those from earlier generations may recall a time when measles was common.
Younger generations would have been among those who had access to childhood immunisation programs to tackle the highly contagious viral disease.
Those programs, introduced in the 1970s, eliminated local transmission of measles, however community susceptibility to vaccine-preventable infectious diseases like measles is now increasing due to lower uptake of vaccinations.
AMA(WA) President Dr Michael Page has described the susceptibility as a “sleeping giant of public health” that is ready to awaken.
He said childhood immunisation rates had dropped from around 94% to 91% in the past few years.
“This can make a significant impact on the ability of childhood illnesses such as measles to spread through our communities,” Dr Page said
While cases of measles have been recorded in Australia in recent years, they were most often in returned travellers, likely unvaccinated or with waning immunity, who had contracted the disease overseas.
However so far this year, at least 14 cases of measles have been recorded in WA, with at least 10 of them part of a local outbreak.
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A quick glance at the WA notifiable infectious disease dashboard makes it clear that these numbers are out of the ordinary, with a total of four cases recorded in 2020.
No cases were recorded during 2021 when the international border was closed, or in 2022 when the WA border re-opened but international travel was yet to pick back up.
The previous two years – 2023 and 2024 – each saw a total of six measles cases recorded in WA.
Dr Page said vaccine scepticism, vaccine fatigue and complacency were all playing a part in decreasing rates of vaccination.
“Vaccine fatigue is a new but seemingly quite real phenomenon arising from the vaccine mandates of the COVID era and refers to those people who are simply ‘over it’ and can’t be bothered going to have more vaccines,” he said.
Babies and young children have access to vaccinations including measles, mumps, rubella, pneumococcal disease, and meningococcal ACWY.
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According to data provided to Medical Forum from the Grattan Institute, in 2020 no WA communities had less than 10% of their one-year-old population unvaccinated. As of September 2024, 11 parts of WA fall into that category.
The Gascoyne region has seen a 13% drop in the rate of one-year olds who are fully vaccinated in the past four years.
In 2020, 95.6% of one-year olds in that region were fully vaccinated, however as of September 2024 the number is just 82% – the lowest in the State.
Other areas of regional WA where vaccination rates are below 90% were the Augusta/Margaret River/Busselton area, Manjimup, Mid West, Goldfields, East and West Pilbara and Albany.
In the metropolitan area, Fremantle, Mundaring and Mandurah have less than 90% vaccination rates in their one-year-olds.
The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance Australia has been working to understand why Australia has seen a gradual decline in childhood vaccinations since the onset of the pandemic.
Researchers from its National Vaccination Insights project conducted a survey of 2000 parents to understand barriers to uptake of National Immunisation Program vaccines among children under five years of age.
Almost 18% of parents of partially vaccinated children reported they did not believe vaccines were safe for their child, while 20.5% said they could not afford the costs associated with getting their children fully vaccinated.
Almost half of the parents of unvaccinated children said they did not intend on their children getting all the recommended vaccinations.
More than 43% of parents of unvaccinated children also said they did not trust the information about vaccines that their child’s doctor or nurse gave them and almost 40% said they did not believe vaccinating children helps to protect others in the community.
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Curtin University Professor of International Health Jaya Dantas said the community was not as protected against vaccine-preventable diseases, like measles, as it should be.
“Outbreaks are usually due to a lack of vaccination due to misinformation and hesitancy which has only increased globally post-COVID,” she said.
“We need childhood vaccination rates of 95% for herd immunity but currently only 92.21% of two-year-old children in Australia are vaccinated against measles – with some regions at much lower rates.
“We need to keep re-enforcing that vaccines do indeed make a difference and protect us from infectious diseases that can be debilitating or cause death.”
Dr Page said denial, vulnerability, and complacency were likely all part of the reason vaccination rates had dropped.
He urged medical practitioners not to be complacent about falling vaccination rates.
“We need to use every opportunity we can to remind the community about the major advances that have been made in public health over the past century, and that the world of the past was in many respects a darker and more dangerous place in which to live.”
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