Immunisation

Whooping Cough is funded for pregnant women in their third trimester and recommended for close family members* ie. partner, grandparents and close family members.

*Whooping Cough vaccinations are not funded for family members.

Since tetanus bacteria are everywhere in the environment and the disease is not transmitted from person to person, community (herd) immunity does not protect individuals.

Vaccination with three or more doses of tetanus-containing vaccine is required for full protection, followed by booster vaccinations throughout life. Booster doses are funded at 11 years of age.

Boosters may be recommended following injury where the wound is at high risk of being infected with tetanus or if it has been more than 5 years since the last booster.

Shingles is a painful skin rash, caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox.

After you recover from chickenpox, the virus stays in your body. It moves to the roots of your nerve cells (near the spinal cord) and becomes inactive (dormant). Later, if the virus becomes active again, shingles is the name given to the symptoms it causes. 

You can only get shingles if you’ve had chickenpox in the past (usually as a child). While anyone who has recovered from chickenpox may develop shingles, the risk of shingles increases as you get older.

It is not known what exactly causes the virus to become active again, but the risk of getting shingles is greater in people with a weakened immune system.

You can’t catch shingles from someone else. However, if you’ve never had chickenpox, or received the chickenpox vaccine, you can catch chickenpox from close contact with someone who has shingles, because the shingles blisters contain the chickenpox virus.