Childhood immunisation rates in New Zealand have hit a three-year high, with 80.2% of Kiwi kids now fully immunised by 2 years old.

Seven months ago, 75.7% were up to date. So the 4.5% leap forward is a welcome statistic for the Government that aims to get 95% coverage by 2030.

University of Auckland senior lecturer and research virologist Natalie Netzler told The Front Page that while child immunisation rates are slowly climbing, rates in certain communities are still a huge worry.

“What we’re seeing for some of our Māori communities is around 35% immunisation coverage and 44% for some of our Pacific communities.

“This is really concerning because after the 2019 outbreak of measles in Samoa, we saw over 80 people die. Even more tragically, they were mostly children under the age of four.

“I think one thing that we could really do better as a nation is have Government funding that really backs community leaders who are trusted within that community, who can help share the right information, in the right way.

“We saw this during Covid. The more work we did in this, the more investment we made, the higher those immunisation rates got.

“We actually saw for a while there Pacific communities leading the rates in terms of New Zealand vaccinations against Covid,” she said.

Netzler said the reasons why some rates are so low are complex.

" One of the real battles we have is misinformation and disinformation all about vaccines, but particularly about MMR.

“I think what’s really important is that we get more funding from the Government to make sure that we can have community-led initiatives.

“We see a lot of access barriers in our harder-to-reach communities, but we also see some real champions. We see cases like the Moko Van in Te Tai Tokerau, which is taking the vaccine out to people who can’t get to a clinic, which is really encouraging,” she said.