Vaccination

The call to review restrictions on pharmacist vaccinators is getting louder – and not just to enable MMR vaccines to be given in pharmacies

Open outside of normal business hours and on weekends, with no appointments necessary, pharmacies are well placed to boost public uptake of the measles vaccine, many believe. 

Flu, whooping cough, measles – what’s coming next? Vaccination has never been more important. Christchurch pharmacist Sarah Mooney discusses vaccines pharmacists can currently administer, and looks at the steps needed to become a pharmacist vaccinator and to set up a vaccination service in the pharmacy

From next year, all new pharmacists will be trained as vaccinators to curb increasing rates of infectious disease in New Zealand

The Ministry of Health should allow pharmacists to administer MMR vaccines to curtail the effects of the current measles outbreak, National’s Associate Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.

The Ministry of Health is urgently working through issues preventing community pharmacists from giving MMR vaccinations as the Auckland measles outbreak worsens

A Pharmaceutical Society appeal for the Ministry of Health to permit pharmacists to give measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations has the support of the director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre

The number of influenza vaccines delivered in pharmacies has shot up since 2016 with more than 75,000 distributed to pharmacies so far this year

Vaccinators are asked to limit their influenza shots to only those eligible for publicly funded injections  

More than one million doses of seasonal influenza vaccine have now been distributed and The Ministry of Health is encouraging even more New Zealanders to get vaccinated.