Patience urged as nurses set out on vaccination round

By STUART DYE

Health officials went to 15 schools yesterday in the first wave of the schools meningitis vaccination campaign.

It is a logistical nightmare for the 90 public health nurses and 20 support staff as they set about visiting about 230 schools and 90,000 pupils in two weeks.

Lizzie Farrell, public health nurse services co-ordinator at Counties Manukau District Health Board, said recruiting has started for another 14 nurses. They are needed to ensure all scheduled visits are made.

At each school they must speak to teachers, give presentations to pupils and hand out resource packs and consent letters.

Many principals were in the dark yesterday as to when they would be visited, and urged parents to be patient.

But Manurewa High School, one of the first visited, said nurses had been in during the morning. The 2200-student school held four assemblies for all children to be given a talk and shown a video about the risks and vaccination procedure.

Principal Richard Thornton said permission slips would be sent home immediately with a return deadline of Friday.

However he expected problems with such a large number of students.

"Some will forget the form, some will lose it, others will be sick, so then you are chasing them up on the following Monday," he said.

"When it comes to the jabs, it's the next twist with three separate injections several weeks apart. Once again, kids will be off ill for the second or third one, or will simply decide they aren't having it."

All the school could do, he said, was impress upon parents and students the importance of the vaccination and chase up missing consent forms.

Ms Farrell said all schools would be visited in the coming fortnight before jabs start on August 2.

"The message to parents is fill the forms in carefully and correctly and get them back to school as quickly as possible," said Ms Farrell.

"We cannot vaccinate without them."