Health Minister Jillian Skinner said the increased rate of immunisation among Aboriginal children was "absolutely fabulous" and had "set the standard for the rest of the community". A child at the Koolyangarra Aboriginal child and family centre in Cranebrook, where one of the immunisation programs has been run. Credit:Brendan Esposito "The NSW Ministry of Health and Local Health Districts have worked together to boost immunisation rates but the greatest credit must go to the parents and families of Aboriginal children, who have heeded the message about the undeniable benefits of vaccination," she said. The program was developed out of the Hunter New England Health Service, which discovered a large gap in vaccination rates among its population of nearly 47,000 Aboriginal residents. Vicky Sheppeard​, the director of the communicable diseases branch of NSW Health, said when the ministry saw the success of the program, they decided to fund Aboriginal health workers across the state.

"Now for the first time NSW had the highest rate in the country," she said. The program is running as a pilot from 2012 to 2015, and has been funded from next year. During the pilot, the vaccination rate among Aboriginal children at five years increased from 90 per cent to 95 per cent, which is generally considered the threshold for herd immunity. For one-year-olds, it increased from 85 per cent to nearly 91 per cent.

Dr Sheppeard said while other areas of the state faced pockets of vaccine-resistance or hesitancy, this was not generally the case among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. "We see very little hesitance in the Aboriginal community – once the barriers to access and timeliness are overcome, we can see the excellent rates that are achieved," she said. She said it's still too early to say whether the program will lift the rate for one-year-olds to equal levels, or whether additional support will be needed. "Every year there's a new cohort of parents, so it's not like other problems where you build and build each year," she said. "But our workers will be gaining skills and the new ground work will be done." She said the ideas behind the program had the potential to apply to other areas of health.

"What we need to do and are making every endeavour to do is to make links between these intensive programs… and working with these other teams to co-ordinate the efforts between the other parts of health," she said.