The Southern District Health Board now has a single vaccination team, without anyone being out of a job, Public Health South medical officer of health Dr Marion Poore says.
Dr Poore said the new Southern DHB vaccine preventable diseases programme team was established at the end of last month.
Previously, staff worked in teams established by the old Southland and Otago DHBs, which merged in May.
Invercargill-based Jillian Boniface led the new team of 13 staff (7.8 full-time equivalent), who worked in Invercargill, Dunedin, and Central Otago.
Dr Poore said disestablishing a 0.3 full-time equivalent Otago maternity liaison role, reducing a vacant Southland national immunisation register co-ordination role from 1 to 0.5 full-time equivalent, and redeploying a 0.2 full-time equivalent worker from the Otago outreach service allowed the creation of a full-time leadership role for Ms Boniface.
''No redundancies were made as affected staff were relocated elsewhere in the organisation,'' she said.
Dr Poore said a steering group would be established in the new year to guide the new team.
''We believe this single team approach will enable us to continue to improve service delivery and assist us to maintain the high coverage we are already achieving across the Southern DHB.''
The challenge was to maintain the good results, she said.
''Since October 2010, over 92% of Southern DHB children aged 2 have been fully vaccinated and 95% of Maori children aged 2 are fully vaccinated.
This means the Southern DHB is ahead of the Ministry of Health target for immunisation.''
