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<\/p>\nVaccination alone will not be enough to stop the “rare outbreak” of diphtheria from spreading in Western Australia, with the state likely to seek federal support to ensure remote communities are fully covered, the state’s director of communicable disease control says.<\/p>\n
An outbreak of diphtheria across Australia this year has seen more than 220 cases reported, with the disease primarily in the Northern Territory, WA and South Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The federal government has announced a multi-million-dollar funding boost to help tackle the outbreak.<\/p>\n
Of the 85 cases recorded so far in WA, most are in the Kimberley region.<\/p>\n
Paul Armstrong said the disease appeared to be caused by a strain that was first discovered in Northern Queensland in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr Armstrong said the current vaccination program underway was focused on preventing more serious symptoms rather than containing the spread of the disease.<\/p>\n
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Paul Armstrong says more efforts beyond vaccination are needed to contain the diphtheria outbreak in WA. (ABC News: Glyn Jones)<\/p>\n
“We do have very high vaccination rates in WA, and we have over 90 per cent vaccination rates in the Kimberley and other regions,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I don’t think that’s the reason we’re having this outbreak at the moment.”<\/p>\n
He said the first phase of a two-part vaccination program was already underway in the three affected areas, with 2,000 people vaccinated since the start of May, but thousands more were at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There is still a long way to go,” Dr Armstrong said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve probably got around 18,000 people in those three regions, Aboriginal people \u2014 who are the ones with the highest risk \u2014 and there’s a lot of other non-Aboriginal people in those regions.”<\/p>\n
Two-phase vaccination rollout<\/p>\n
Dr Armstrong said the first phase of the rollout was focused on targeting people who were not vaccinated and provided free shots from the state government.<\/p>\n
“The effect of the vaccine is not so much about the transmission of the germ, but it’s about if you get infected with the germ, then your likelihood of having severe disease is very low,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the second phase would require “a lot more planning”, with access to remote communities a priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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People have been encouraged to make sure their vaccinations are up to date. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)<\/p>\n
“[It will involve] teams to go out to individual communities and vaccinate \u2026 we will be doing that in close cooperation with Aboriginal health groups in those regions and the Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia as well,”\u00a0 Dr Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
“We are \u2026 also in discussions with the Commonwealth on how we might augment the resourcing of that vaccination program.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
New challenge for clinical staff<\/p>\n
The Aboriginal Medical Service’s Lorraine Anderson said many health staff in the Kimberley had never seen the disease before, so knowing how to treat it was a challenge.<\/p>\n
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Lorraine Anderson says\u00a0she has never had to treat diphtheria until now. (ABC Kimberley)<\/p>\n
“Trying to introduce a disease that is so ancient that it’s relatively new to our clinicians is really difficult,” she said.<\/p>\n
“And the other thing is it tends to present with a sore throat or skin infection, which we get constantly through our clinics, in particular in the Kimberley.”<\/p>\n
Caitlyn White from the Aboriginal Health Council of WA urged everyone who had not been vaccinated against diphtheria in the past five years, or at all, to go and get a shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr White said the lack of a workforce able to give people the vaccinations or boosters was a problem.<\/p>\n
“People are coming and asking for the vaccination, but we have busy clinics with a lot of other things that we’re dealing with,” she said.<\/p>\n
Not aware ‘diphtheria existed’ in Kimberley<\/p>\n
A mother of two boys in Wyndham only heard about the diphtheria outbreak after she took her sons to hospital last week with sore throats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Emma Venables said once she got there, the staff began asking about diphtheria.<\/p>\n
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Emma Venables says the Wyndham hospital is proactive with measures to prevent diphtheria. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know anything about it, so I did a bit of a Google search and was surprised to find out what it was and that it’s even existing in the Kimberley at the moment,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised that we hadn’t had any notes come home about it, if it was a population health issue, that we weren’t aware of it until we actually took the kids up [to hospital].”<\/p>\n
State working to ‘manage outbreak’<\/p>\n
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