Abstract
A recent Public Health Expert Briefing discussed how Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) is falling behind comparable high-income countries by not protecting our infants from Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infection. However, we also have important omissions in our adult immunisation programme, notably highly restricted access to funded shingles and pneumococcal vaccines and no funded access to an adult RSV vaccine. Furthermore, unlike Australia, we do not address the important equity issue of greater disease burden by ethnicity for Māori and Pacific peoples.
Immunisation decision-making and funding processes differ from comparable countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. For NZ, Pharmac considers and funds vaccines alongside all medications. Pharmac is constrained by its limited budget. As a result, newer highly effective vaccines are not getting onto the national schedule in the way they are in other comparable countries.