What's Happening in Slacks Creek, QLD…

In what is considered an Australian first, Logan City Council has introduced an outreach vaccination program to try and reverse statistics highlighting the area as having one of the state’s lowest rates.

This is in spite the fact that the government provides full immunisation for more than 90% of Queensland children, aged one to five. However, Slacks Creek is among suburbs identified as having the lowest immunisation rates in Queensland along with Woodridge, Underwood, Logan Central and Kingston.

Logan City’s innovative program has been offered to at-risk families in their own homes.

Senior nurse Gillian Hermosilla said the program was initiated in an attempt to turn the low rates in local suburbs around.

Council research identified a lack of transport as being a key reason why parents were failing to get their children immunised. This meant they either found it difficult or were unable to attend the immunisation clinics, which were clearly identified in regular circulars such as flyer printing.

To combat this problem, the outreach program now takes the service into homes once a week every Wednesday.

Operating on a referral basis, the program is offered only to those families deemed by health professionals as having a legitimate reason for not being able to attend clinics.

As a result of the council outreach initiative, which costs $20,000 a year to run, almost 2,500 people have benefited from the service so far, and local immunisation rates are on the rise.

Council’s health operations program leader Andrew Mayfield said it was believed the outreach program was the first of its kind to be offered by a local government department nationwide.