The Northern Territory's Chief Health Officer is worried vaccine hesitancy is stopping parents ensuring their children get life-saving immunisations. She, and the parents of a toddler who died from meningococcal disease, are appealing to families to snap up all the available childhood vaccines, including one which will become free in January.
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00:00Sally and Ash Lawrence have successfully used a public awareness campaign in cafes to persuade
00:08the NT government to offer free meningococcal B vaccines from January, after the disease
00:14killed their two-year-old daughter Skylar, pictured right, in 2017.
00:18They were very cheeky, the two twins, Skylar and Raina, together. They obviously got up
00:23to mischief and they love baby chinos.
00:25The disease took them unawares.
00:27The symptoms that Skylar presented with were just generic symptoms like a cold or a flu.
00:33She had a fever and then diarrhoea and then next minute she had this rash that appeared
00:40and we presented her to ED and then within a few hours she passed away.
00:45They had watched with concern as other parents balked at the $600 meningococcal B vaccination
00:51cost because it had only been on the federal government's free childhood vaccines list
00:56for indigenous kids.
00:58Health leaders are even more concerned. Community suspicion about vaccines is making some parents
01:04decide against essential immunisations.
01:08Unfortunately I think this is a legacy from the pandemic when there was so much misinformation
01:15being spread.
01:16Resulting in a resurgence of some diseases.
01:19We are seeing an increase in whooping cough around Australia. We have seen outbreaks of
01:24measles.
01:25That's partly because current generations can't remember the times when debilitating
01:31and fatal childhood diseases were prevalent in the community.
01:36Parents forget how serious these illnesses are. They forget the terrible impact.
01:42Obviously we don't want any other families to go through what we've gone through.
01:46They're urging no parent to risk their child contracting a disease they can get a free
01:51vaccination for.