The 16th National Immunisation Conference 2018 held in Adelaide in June had the theme of “Immunisation for all: Gains, gaps and goals”. Immunisation is a core part of the role of many refugee health nurses, so it was great to see a number of presentations at the conference about immunisation for people of refugee background.
Dr Georgie Paxton, Head of Immigrant Health at RCH, Melbourne presented a keynote address in one of the conference’s plenary sessions on “Catching up with catch-up – refugee-background and asylum seeker populations.” A video of this presentation can be accessed via the conference website here.
Other presentations of specifically discussing immunisation for people of refugee background in Australia included a keynote by Dr Nicholas Zwar of the University of Wollongong, speaking about immunisation for migrants and travellers; data presented by Meryl Jones of the Mater Refugee Health Service, showing the immunisation coverage rates achieved by the service; and qualitative research presented by Ikran Abdi on barriers and facilitators of immunisation in East African refugees and migrants in Australia.
The PHAA NIC2018 website has links to many of these presentations and more and can be viewed via this link.
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