Northland's mass vaccination campaign gets a boost

Northland's mass vaccination campaign against meningococcal C gets a boost with mobile text messaging

Auckland, New Zealand, 1 November 2011 - A mass vaccination campaign in Northland aimed at immunising up to 38,000 people aged 1-20 against meningococcal C has been boosted with the use of text messaging. Manaia PHO and Te Tai Tokerau PHO are using Vensa Health's TXT2Remind patient practise text-messaging system in Northland as part of the emergency response immunisation campaign. The system was installed across all 36 general practices in August.

Chris Farrelly, Chief Executive of Manaia PHO says, "We made the decision to roll out TXT2Remind to cover our entire enrolled population just prior to the current outbreak so the platform was already in place to enable an immediate response across the entire population. We've been able to reach people quickly and effectively via text messaging and we expect to see some real improvements as immunisation rates in the region increase."

"Meningococcal C can be life-threatening so it's really important we immunise our priority 20 and under age group as quickly as possible. We're using text messaging alongside campaigns in schools and in the media. Our hardest to reach group are the 17-20 age group that left school. We're anticipating that for this group TXT2Remind will be a major contact channel," says Farrelly.

The text message vaccine campaign started in early October and will run until mid-December. Clinics can also deliver other primary care messages with the newly installed TXT2Remind system.

Ahmad Jubbawey, Chief Executive of Vensa Health says, "Our system is very effective for helping achieve population health targets such as immunisation rates quickly. In an emergency response situation such as a meningococcal C or a measles outbreak groups that are most at risk can be targeted across the whole population very easily."

Vensa Health's system allows primary and secondary health providers to send appointment reminders, lab result notifications, medication reminders, surveys and immunisation reminders by a Shared Care Platform.

TXT2Remind service is part of the Vensa mHealth+ platform that can be used in a very targeted way to more effectively deliver on the government's priority health targets such as immunisations for under 2's, better diabetes and cardiovascular services, smoking cessation and improved access to elective surgery in DHB regions.

ENDS

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