Australian government to provide free pneumococcal disease vaccinations

The Commonwealth Government will provide free vaccines to protect newborn babies and older people from pneumococcal disease, as well as a catch up program for toddlers.

The Government will spend $178 million on the childhood pneumococcal vaccination program to the end of 2006. The government is also committing to funding the program in future years to enable this to be part of routine vaccination arrangements for all new born babies.

Following a world-wide shortage of the childhood pneumococcal vaccine, Prevenar, the Australian Government has now secured a supply of the vaccine and will make it available free of charge for all babies born after 1st January 2005 and also for all children born since 1st January 2003.

The government’s negotiations with Wyeth Australia have resulted in a lower price of $81 a dose for newborn children at 2, 4 and 6 months of age and also a special price of $71.30 a dose for the catch-up component of the program for children up to 2 years of age. This value has been achieved by the Government paying in advance for a two-year supply of the vaccine. This special price for the vaccine is a fair deal for Australian taxpayers.

The deal struck with the supplier of Prevenar vaccine, Wyeth Australia, secures stocks of an internationally scarce product for our community. In addition, Wyeth Australia has agreed to keep a three-month supply of Prevenar vaccine here to protect Australians from any future global shortages should they occur.

In addition, from 1 January next year the Government will provide free pneumococcal vaccine to all Australians aged 65 years and older as they are also at increased risk from invasive pneumococcal disease.

At present older Australians can purchase the vaccine at a subsidised cost through the Government’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Under the new pneumococcal program older Australians can go directly to their family doctor or health care provider and have their pneumococcal immunisation and the vaccine will be free of charge. Today’s announcement means that during 2005 up to 2.4 million young and older Australians will have access to free pneumococcal vaccine.

This is in addition to the 91,000 children who already receive free pneumococcal vaccine because they are at greatest risk of this disease. The Australian government in 2001 committed $21.2 million for these children in a targeted vaccination program. In 2002, there were 2271 cases and 175 deaths of invasive pneumococcal disease in Australia across all ages. Of those, 761 cases and nine deaths occurred in children aged under five years.