56% of Australians won’t vaccinate against Swine flu: Survey

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDSep 9 2010

Over fifty per cent of Australians were not vaccinated against the swine flu before winter arrived this year, with many of these people deliberately choosing not to be vaccinated.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has put the total number of vaccinated Australians at the end of February at about 3.9 million, or 18 per cent of the population. AIHW director Dr Penny Allbon said, “Of those who had not been vaccinated, more than one in four adults intended to get vaccinated before this winter.” The survey that gathered data on more than 17,000 people in February found that more than half (56%) of respondents had not been vaccinated and did not intend to be before the 2010 flu season arrived she added.

The reasons behind this lack of motivation includes a perception that swine flu was not a serious risk to their own health (26.7%), the vaccine had problems (15.7%), vaccination was not a priority for them (10.9%) and the threat of swine flu had already passed (11.6%).

The vaccine offering protection against the A(H1N1) virus, swine flu, was available free of charge in Australia from the end of September last year. Only 21% adults took advantage of the vaccination. People cited various reasons for getting vaccinated. Some included the seriousness of swine flu (25%), doctor's advice (17%), employment-related reasons (14%) and belonging to an “at risk” group (11%). The high risk group included pregnant women, parents and guardians of infants, people with underlying chronic conditions, the severely obese, indigenous Australians and health and community care workers. “Of these "at risk" groups, significantly higher vaccination uptake than the general population was seen among people with underlying chronic conditions (34.7%) and health and community care workers (29.5%),” Dr Allbon said.

“From the survey results, there appears to be some state variation in vaccination uptake,” Dr Allbon said. “Tasmania had the highest vaccination uptake at 23.5 per cent, while Western Australia had the lowest, at 15.0 per cent.”