Compulsory jabs advocated

A visiting vaccine expert believes New Zealand should follow Australia’s lead and make vaccinations compulsory for all children.

Professor Ian Frazer said immunisation should be treated as a public health issue for the general good of the public.

‘‘We make people wear seatbelts because we know how great the cost is in terms of damage to human lives if you don’t, and infectious disease is no different,’’ he said.

‘‘Australia has quite rightly taken a vigorous approach to certain childhood vaccinations that vaccines are not optional, they are mandatory. If you choose not to have them, then there are consequences.’’

Frazer said there was ‘‘a lot to be said’’ for advocating a similar approach in New Zealand.

His comments followed weeks of controversy over a tour of the film Vaxxed, which promotes the discredited view that there is a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Dr Lance O’Sullivan thrust the film into national debate when he stormed the stage at a Northland screening to perform a haka and warned attendees ‘‘your presence here will cause babies to die’’.

Frazer cautioned it was counterproductive to ridicule or ignore anti-vaxxers, and instead encouraged people to engage in open debate about the benefits of vaccination.

The Australian researcher is most famously known as the inventor of the HPV vaccine, which immunises against human papillomavirus to protect women from cervical cancer. His vaccine has been administered to more

"Australia has quite rightly taken a vigorous approach to certain childhood vaccinations." Vaccine expert Ian Frazer

than 100 million people worldwide. He is president of the Cancer Council Australia, and also advises the World Health Organisation. Frazer now works to expand access to the HPV vaccine in developing countries.

He said one of the challenges was educating people about the dangers of papillomavirus.

‘‘If any other virus killed quarter of a million people worldwide each year there would be a public outcry,’’ he said. ‘‘Viruses like Zika and Ebola kill hundreds of people, and there’s a demand for universal immunisation. But because papillomavirus is a virus which you get now, and it causes a problem in 25 years, the enthusiasm isn’t so great.’’

Frazer said there was no evidence the HPV vaccine could be unsafe for teenage girls, as has been suggested by some vaccine opponents.

The parents of Upper Hutt teen Jasmine Nicole Renata have long claimed she was killed by the HPV vaccine. Jasmine died in 2009, and her mother told an inquest she had suffered a range of health problems after she started receiving the vaccinations. However, that was rejected by Coroner Garry Evans in findings released in 2016.

‘‘The evidence falls far short of establishing that Jasmine’s death was due to the adverse effects of her vaccinations,’’ Evans said.

Frazer said anecdotal stories were easy to find, but people needed to remember that association did not prove causation.

‘‘I could be vaccinated this afternoon, and be killed crossing the road, but nobody would assume I’d been killed crossing the road because I’d been vaccinated,’’ he said.

‘‘But if you get vaccinated, and then your child comes down with a rare chronic disease, then the assumption in people’s minds is that the two must be connected.’’

Frazer acknowledged it was impossible to definitively rule out the possibility of vaccine injury, but said the benefits to public health always outweighed the possibility of personal harm.

Frazer has spoken at a number of events during his visit to New Zealand.