Professor Sharon Lewin

So we have a childhood vaccine against diphtheria, which is why we rarely see it

You know, up until recently, 95% of children across Australia had all of their vaccinations.

And we're seeing this outbreak is in remote and large Indigenous communities where vaccination uptake has been dropping.

The theory of vaccine prevents...

people from becoming sick from the bacteria and not actually acquiring the bacteria.

So therefore, people can be carrying that bacteria in their nose and throats and spread it to people that are unvaccinated.

And then those are the people that will get sick.

So socioeconomic environments make a big impact because in lower socioeconomic groups, we've got crowded housing, for example, is an ideal environment.

where you're going to have close contact and then transmission.

So it's a combination of declining vaccination rates as well as the actual environment that are driving this outbreak in remote, far north Australia.

Yeah, I mean, I can't link it to misinformation, but declining vaccine rates is real in Australia.

Declining vaccine rates in Australia

in remote communities is real.

The reasons for that are mixed.

There's a combination of an element of misinformation, people no longer wanting to have vaccines or thinking vaccines cause adverse effects.

We've saw that exploding during COVID.

And then there is, of course, communities that may not have access to medical or nursing or allied health support and so may not just be well-educated about that.

And that's something that we need to do more of.

And the interviews that I've heard

with Indigenous leaders since the diphtheria outbreak are that their leadership are very impressive, wanting to make a difference and just wanting to make sure that we make these messages really simple so people understand what this means.