A diphtheria outbreak has swept through the Northern Territory, infecting 131 people and likely claiming one life. Researchers say overcrowded homes and poor skin health are fuelling the spread.<\/p>\n
This marks the first return of locally transmitted, toxin-producing diphtheria to the Territory in over twenty years.<\/p>\n
Researchers recorded 97 skin infections and 34 respiratory cases between January 2025 and April 2026, according to a study in Eurosurveillance.<\/p>\n
Aboriginal people made up 95 per cent of those infected\u2014125 out of 131 cases.<\/p>\n
“Because of high vaccination rates, the Northern Territory of Australia had not seen locally transmitted toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae since the 1990s,” the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n
They described the ongoing outbreak as being “characterised by a high proportion of cutaneous cases with transmission driven by crowding and consequent poor skin health”.<\/p>\n
Thirty-nine people needed hospital care, including 12 with respiratory diphtheria. Two ended up in intensive care.<\/p>\n
One adult, fully vaccinated as a child but without a recent booster, likely died from myocarditis linked to the outbreak.<\/p>\n
Diphtheria is a bacterial disease, preventable by vaccine, that attacks the throat or infects skin wounds.<\/p>\n
The researchers said most cases had been relatively mild, likely because of previous vaccination.<\/p>\n
“Despite high vaccination rates, diphtheria has re-emerged in the NT,” they wrote.<\/p>\n
“Disease has been predominantly mild.”<\/p>\n
Of the 12 people hospitalised or killed by respiratory diphtheria, two had never been vaccinated. Seven others had not received a diphtheria shot in over a decade.<\/p>\n
By February 2026, 95.4 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the NT were fully vaccinated against diphtheria by age five.<\/p>\n
The study found Aboriginal people bore the brunt of the outbreak, a result of entrenched social and health inequalities\u2014crowded, substandard housing and high homelessness rates among them.<\/p>\n
“Diphtheria is well known to take hold in marginalised populations,” the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n
High rates of scabies, skin sores and other infections had already set the stage for skin diseases to spread, the researchers said.<\/p>\n
“It is no surprise that introduction of a toxin-positive C. diphtheriae strain in the NT has resulted in rapid spread,” they wrote.<\/p>\n
NT Health sounded the alarm in March, rolling out antibiotics, contact tracing and booster shots in response.<\/p>\n
The researchers said Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations would be crucial to controlling the outbreak.<\/p>\n
They concluded that while vaccination and antibiotics remained essential, “improvements to housing must be prioritised”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A diphtheria outbreak has swept through the Northern Territory, infecting 131 people and likely claiming one life. Researchers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,30375,347237,399736,18483,137,7688,44,8867,84368],"class_list":["post-826670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-closing-the-gap","tag-diptheria","tag-eurosurveillance","tag-first-nations-health","tag-health","tag-housing","tag-news","tag-northern-territory","tag-remote-communities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}