Article #33441

By the time a national vaccine blitz was announced this week, unlinked cases had already been reported in four states. Why did it take so long for governments to act?

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The first time the Northern Territory GP and public health medical officer Dr John Boffa learned that the highly contagious bacterial infection diphtheria was spreading in his community was in late March – several months after the outbreak first began.

“By the time we became aware of it, it had been grumbling along for some time,” says Boffa, who is chief medical officer with the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress Aboriginal Corporation, a community-controlled primary healthcare service in Alice Springs.