Australia was once a vaccination success story, but that success is slipping away.

After peaking in 2020 child vaccination in Australia is falling, say researchers from the Grattan Institute.

Child vaccination is one of the most cost-effective health interventions. It accounts for 40 per cent of the global reduction in infant deaths since 1974 and has led to big health gains in Australia over the past two decades.

Ten years after we begun mass vaccination against polio in 1956, it was virtually eliminated. Our child vaccination rates have been among the best in the world.

In 1997, governments introduced the National Immunisation Program to vaccinate children against diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, and measles.

What followed was a public health triumph, the Grattan researchers say.

“In 1995, only 52 per cent of one-year-olds were fully immunised. By 2020, Australia had reached 95 per cent coverage for one-year-olds and five-year-olds,” they wrote in The Conversation.

But since 2020 the share of children who are fully vaccinated has fallen every year.

In 2018, there were only 10 communities where more than 10 per cent of one-year-old children were not fully vaccinated. Last year, that number ballooned to 50 communities.

The researchers say the trend to lower vaccinations “shifted, or at least accelerated, during the pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy, fuelled by misinformation about COVID vaccines, is a growing threat”.

Governments, they say, should step up public health campaigns that counter misinformation, boost awareness of immunisation and its benefits, and communicate effectively to low-vaccination groups.