Thank you so much, and can I also acknowledge that we’re coming together on the beautiful lands of the Kaurna people, and pay my respects to their elders past and present and emerging.
As you were talking, James, I was drafting regulation in my head that I intend to promulgate to forbid you from retiring. Get that out of your head now, you’ve got too much more work to do. That was a really inspirational presentation I was so glad to be able to listen to. And to Dawn, whose presentation I caught the end of, thank you again. Dawn is really my principal conduit to the amazing and terrifically important Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector, so one of the joys of being reappointed to this portfolio after the election is being able to continue to work with Dawn and all of the organisations that she has the privilege of representing.
Before I come to the remarks I'm really here to talk about, which is the immunisation strategy, there was so much in James's presentation there that really resonates with me as we think about what the job of a CDC might be and what it will add to the work that you all do. But really add to the public health of our great country, but also some of the technological revolutions we're facing.
Naomi mentioned the work that we're doing on HIV. We've got a very clear message from the rest of the world that ours should be, and probably is the only country that could be, the first on the planet to virtually eliminate HIV transmission. We've taken that challenge up as an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that after 40 years, this epidemic can be beaten. But we know that the population is a very different population to the group of Australians who bore the brunt of the early stages of the epidemic. One of the great outcomes recognised at the last HIV Scientific Conference a year or two ago. One of the five that they report out of this really landmark global conference that takes place every two years, was the virtual elimination of transmission of HIV in the inner suburbs of Sydney.
We all know, people of a certain age, that part of the country that bore the brunt of those early years of the epidemic through hard work, community-led hard work, amazing work of clinicians and the construction of an architecture of testing and treatment, and community-led information campaigns has enabled that community to beat the epidemic. But the focal point now of transmission is not in the inner suburbs of Sydney, and not in largely the Anglo men who have sex with men community either. It's out in the western suburbs of Sydney, it's in the similar suburbs of Melbourne, they are cald communities. There are issues of stigma and access to treatment that frankly, are very different to the challenges we faced in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Self-testing, point-of-care testing is the only way we are going to achieve virtual elimination.
A whole lot of other things have to happen as well. Our communications campaigns need to be directed at and responsive to the way in which those communities listen to campaigns. We need to educate and increase the capability of the health professionals that those Australians use as well. But self-testing is a game changer. Point-of-care testing is a game changer. Dawn and I were whispering to each other the way in which self-testing has transformed cervical cancer rates in this country in those same hard to reach populations in our urban areas, but also First Nations communities in remote Australia. I am a firm believer that self-testing and point-of-care testing is almost the mobile phone of testing, and then early intervention. And I was delighted to hear some of the challenges but also some of the insights that James made there.
I'm also struck time and time again, including by James's presentation, at the very patchy way in which we do genotyping in the country. We do some genotyping of HIV for example, but only in some states and not others. This is some of the great work that a CDC can do to make sure that there is uniform genotyping, so that we can identify not just clusters in New South Wales or in the Northern Territory but across the country. Really get across what those clusters mean and how we do a joined up intervention into those communities to defeat those clusters. Thanks, James, and thanks to all of you for the work that you did.
But that's not why I'm here. I should probably share the remarks that actually led Terry and Caroline to inviting me here. And thank you for the invitation. This is a terrific conference. I'm so glad it's come to my hometown of Adelaide. You probably don't know, but there's been quite a bit of coverage over the morning in the media about the conference itself and the deliberations you had, which I know included Mary Wood yesterday, about the CDC. The enormous contribution that people in this room have made to our thinking about the design of the permanent CDC that we want passed through the Parliament through legislation in the second half of this year and into effect on 1 January. Thank you for the work that you do.
I'm here today to launch Australia's new National Immunisation Strategy. This strategy for the rest of the decade, the next five years, is the third strategy of its kind in Australia's immunisation history. A history that shows that Australia has one of the highest immunisation rates in the world, with many Australians among the 150 million lives that we think have been saved worldwide over the past half a century through immunisation. Deadly diseases prevented, in some cases eliminated. Vaccines delivered free for most Australians under a national immunisation program, that is widely and deservedly acknowledged as one of the most comprehensive and successful in the world.
The NIP now funds 31 vaccines against 18 diseases. It's prevented deaths and serious illness from those diseases right across our community. Most of them, of course, in children under the age of five. I'm proud to say the NIP is always expanding. Last year, our government expanded one of the most comprehensive and widely available shingles vaccine programs on the planet – maybe with the exception of Germany, but we'll still claim it, nonetheless. Since implementing that program, over 1.65 million mainly older Australians have received a free shingles vaccination. Without listing it on the NIP, they would’ve been paying about $560 for the two-dose vaccine. This has already saved largely older Australians more than $900 million in out-of-pocket payments to get access to this highly effective, long-lasting, up-to-date vaccine.
Just last week, we celebrated, I certainly celebrated the fact that more than 60,000 mums in Australia have already received the new maternal RSV vaccine that we've all been waiting for for so long. Protecting their babies from the serious illness that we know can be caused by RSV since Abrysvo was first listed on the NIP in February. The success of this world-leading maternal vaccine program for RSV has already resulted in a 40 per cent drop in RSV notifications for young children, mainly very young babies. From over 45,000 cases between February and May last year to just 27,000 cases during the same period this year. I know we can do even better than that, as that vaccine continues to flow through the community of pregnant mums across Australia and we back it in a belt and braces way with Beyfortus being administered to newborns with a heel prick in the first couple of days of their lives if their mum has not availed herself of Abrysvo.
Since COVID hit, we know that the vaccination number has been declining. It's still very high, but I want to talk a bit about the degree to which it's not where we want it to be. The decline in childhood vaccination rates across Australia has been steady since 2020. As you know, the reasons for decline essentially are a mix of acceptance issues, concerns around safety, vaccine fatigue and reduced confidence in the vaccination system on the one hand, and access issues that are reported by families, mums and dads as well. Achieving a childhood vaccination coverage target of 95 per cent, as you know better than me, is crucial to establishing herd immunity, which significantly reduces the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases and protects entire communities.
Since the pandemic, we've seen 15 consecutive quarters of reduced immunisation coverage of Australians under the age of five. Most communities now see a vaccination rate below, and in some cases well below, the 95 per cent rate for herd immunity. In some areas of Australia, as few as 75 per cent children are fully vaccinated against deadly and preventable diseases like measles, diphtheria and polio, substantially increasing the spread of risk of those diseases, particularly in those isolated communities. And it's a diverse list of communities. This is often portrayed in the media. It's a lot of those hinterland communities around areas like Byron Bay or Noosa and the Gold Coast, over at Margaret River in Western Australia. But it's another diverse list of communities as well. We're in the city of Adelaide right now, the centre of Adelaide. The five-year-old immunisation rate in Adelaide City is just 81 per cent, one of the lowest in the community. You see similar rates in communities as diverse as Bankstown, the Goldfields in the west, outback South Australia and many others besides. It is not an easy task for us to turn around the particularly disturbing rates of immunisation in what is our very diverse range of communities.
According to the WHO, the pandemic led to a decline in essential childhood immunisations in more than 100 countries. This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just an Australian one, resulting in outbreaks, as you know, in infectious diseases as broad as yellow fever, cholera, diphtheria, polio and, as we all know, measles as well. Australia is going to continue to experience increasingly more severe outbreaks, preventable deaths, significant demand on health services and reduced productivity unless action is taken now to increase vaccination coverage and turn around these disturbing trends. That's why a new national immunisation strategy is just so important.
It's our roadmap for improving vaccination uptake around Australia over the next five years, with a vision for a healthier Australia through immunisation Through this strategy, we're going to reduce the impact of vaccine-preventable diseases through high uptake of immunisation that is safe, effective and equitable right across the community. The strategy takes a whole-of-system approach to immunisation by outlining priorities for action across our entire health system in partnership with state and territory governments. All state and territory health ministers, with whom I will be meeting again tonight and tomorrow, have endorsed this strategy. Public trust and communication around the importance of vaccination must also increase. The strategy supports better partnering and engagement with communities, delivering services in new and tailored ways. The strategy is going to pave new ways or pave the way to address misinformation and the rise we've seen across the community in vaccine hesitancy. We know that people's trust in vaccination, medicine and science has been impacted in recent years by growing scepticism but also importantly by a proliferation of false and misleading information.
Immunisation providers play a vital role in protecting the health of our community. The strategy seeks to build on that contribution by strengthening providers' knowledge, their confidence and their skills to support safe and effective immunisation delivery. By better engaging with communities, we're going to build trust, understanding and acceptance of immunisation science.
There's also a stronger focus in the strategy on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other priority populations, more equity and better access in particular. The immunisation workforce will be strengthened. We will explore opportunities to enable health professionals to work to their full scope of practice. I have seen the degree to which access for basic immunisations has been improved by opening up all NIP vaccines to community pharmacies over the last 18 months or so. We are going to strive to harmonise workforce policies, training and accreditation across all states and territories, which we have seen develop very substantially since the COVID pandemic.
The new strategy will also focus on future preparedness. Critical to this will be harnessing the power and potential of new vaccine technologies to respond to the evolving communicable disease and vaccine landscape. The strategy also aims to better use data to target immunisation strategies and monitor performance, ensuring best quality and utility for all stakeholders. The reforms we've made to the immunisation register over the past several years, started to his credit by Greg Hunt, have significantly improved our understanding of where immunisation is happening.
I snuck in through the ERC when we got funding for Abrysvo, a maternal vaccine for RSV, a change to the AIR which will mean that we now better understand who is getting whooping cough vaccine, for example, with an asterisk determining whether or not it is a pregnant mum or just someone else in the community getting that vaccine. Constantly seeking to improve our understanding of what is happening now in the immunisation landscape.
A key objective of course is going to be to strengthen collaborative ways of working between the Australian and the state and territory governments to deliver vaccines under the NIP and also under emergency programs that they might be running.
Over the next four years we expect to invest around $2.4 billion in vaccines, communication campaigns, the registry, administration and research activities that enable the effective and efficient implementation of the NIP. We have a really strong history of investing in immunisation as a key form of preventative healthcare that I’m going to build on.
The new National Immunisation Strategy is the first such strategy, as you would have heard yesterday, to be released by the interim Australian CDC, another cause that I know is close to this audience's heart. While the interim CDC is doing fantastic work, the establishment of the full CDC through the parliament to start operation from 1 January next year is going to be a really important way to implement this strategy and other objectives that we have in my portfolio.
My department, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing as we now call it, will now focus on implementing the strategy with states and territories and the broader community. Importantly, the strategy aligns with the World Health Organization's immunisation agenda. Alongside other national efforts, it's going to help support improved health and immunisation outcomes regionally for greater health security and pandemic preparedness. This strategy is the result of very wide consultation with health and medical experts, some of whom I know are in the audience today. The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance contributed very significant expertise, as it always does, and worked in a strong partnership to develop the strategy and I thank them for that contribution. State and Territory Governments worked with us to develop and endorse the strategy, and I again thank them for their partnership and their engagement. The Australian public was consulted extensively, and I thank members of the public who contributed to this strategy as well.
As you know better than me, the new strategy comes at a really critical time. Just as we've seen with whooping cough over the past year and into early ’24 and ‘25, vaccine-preventable disease remains a serious but avoidable health threat. We all learned a lot from the pandemic, particularly around vaccine procurement and delivery. COVID taught us how important it is to have the capability here in Australia, the sovereign capability to manufacture the latest vaccines in our own country. I've since proudly opened the Moderna Technology Centre at Clayton Monash University that will do precisely that. Australia is now one of the very few countries in the world and the first country in the Southern Hemisphere with the capability of end-to-end manufacture of mRNA therapies. It builds and complements our extraordinary capability through CSL that has existed in Melbourne for many years as well.
This facility that Moderna got has the capacity to produce up to 100 million doses of locally made vaccine in a pandemic response scenario. This partnership is also supporting vital research and development opportunities with our world-class research organisations like the Doherty Institute over in Melbourne.
Our government has taken all of the lessons of the pandemic on board for this new strategy. Notably, that better vaccine knowledge and access and uptake across communities must be par, must be central to Australia's future pandemic preparedness. Even though our childhood vaccination rates are still world leading, they are trending in exactly the wrong direction and must be turned around. Immunisation is one of the most important public health achievements in human history. The Australian experience of vaccination and immunisation is one of our incredible health success stories of which we should always be proud notwithstanding today's challenges. With this strategy as our guide, we're better able to write the new chapter and the next chapter in the success story in which you have all played such a significant part.
Thank you for inviting me to be a part of your conference, and all the very best for the rest of the day.