WDHB immunisation leader

Whanganui District Health Board continues to show the rest of the country the way on immunisation.
One of the Government's health targets it has set district health boards is lifting the immunisation rates in children under 2 to 95 per cent by 2012.
The Ministry of Health wants a 90 per cent immunisation rate by July this year 2011 but the WDHB programme is already ahead of that - at 92 per cent - the best success rate among the country's 20 DHBs.
The WDHB and the Whanganui Regional Primary Health Organisation, which has been responsible for the implementing the programme, will have a stand at Majestic Square today manned by health workers to answer questions.
It is to mark the launch of national immunisation week.
Karen Howard, public health nurse and immunisation co-ordinator for the WDHB, has organised the Wanganui initiative with the WRPHO
Ms Howard said immunisation week was a "wonderful opportunity" to reflect on why immunisation was so important and the impact it had had on the world.
"There's absolutely no doubt that it's the best insurance against the spread of disease and that it has saved many lives," she said. "Some diseases have been eradicated altogether. Smallpox is a good case in point. For a brief time, polio was believed to have been eradicated but sadly it's reappeared in recent years due to the drop-off in immunisation rates in Africa which caused the disease to spread."
Over the past couple of years more than 200 children and adults have caught measles in outbreaks throughout New Zealand. Some were so sick they had to be hospitalised.
New Zealand children are eligible for free immunisation against 10 diseases. Teenage girls are also offered immunisation against human papillomavirus.
The WRPHO runs a free immunisation and drop-in clinic at the Gonville Health Centre on Wednesdays from 9am to 1pm but only for childhood immunisation and not for travel vaccinations.
Ms Howard said to fully protect a child from preventable disease, they need to be vaccinated at six weeks, three months, five months, 15 months and age 4, 11 and 12.
"It's a commitment well worth making," she said.