Concerns educated parents in New Zealand were developing a form of "white flight" over immunisation of children against disease were aired at a Parliamentary select committee today.
"There is growing evidence that children of educated parents are...becoming a significant 'hard to reach' population," the Prime Minister's chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, told the health committee.
Anti-immunisation fears were "an extraordinarily difficult issue", but he called for information to be targeted to parents who actively reject vaccinations, with an increased campaign on measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) aimed at parents with degree-level education.
Sir Peter said parents should be shown the relative risks of immunisation, compared with the risks of severe effects from the disease against which children were being protected.
Discussion of immunisation should also be introduced into antenatal education, including the benefits and the risk of immunisation.
British studies had found that children of wealthier, more educated parents were less likely to have received the triple MMR vaccine than the average population, Sir Peter said.
"Uptake of MMR has declined at a greater rate among children of more highly-educated parents, and among those living in more affluent areas."
Sir Peter noted that public awareness of the "herd effect" -- a population could be protected if a high enough proportion was vaccinated -- had hurt vaccination uptake.
"Some parent actively choose to avoid the small risk associated with immunisation," he said.
These parents assumed their own child would be protected by herd immunity, and believed their child was more at risk from the small risk of immunisation than developing the disease.
"I think the thing that will change the vaccination rates for that educated middle-class group is another epidemic," he said. "Suddenly, the doctors' rooms will be crowded out with families wanting measles vaccinations."
Sir Peter said there had been widely publicised concerns over claims that MMR vaccinations were causing autism, but research had shown that the apparent associations were due to chance, as the age of immunisation was also the age at which it became possible to diagnose autism-type disorders.
The research paper which first proposed the autism link was retracted this year, he said.
New Zealand had a national target for 95 percent of children to be fully immunised by 24 months, but in the year to March, only 84 percent of two-year-olds had completed immunisation. Rates were lower -- 78 percent -- among Maori.
Overall, the nation's immunisation rates were low compared with other developed nations, and New Zealand ranked 33rd out of 35 in vaccination rates for measles, having consistently failed since 2000 to achieve the 90 percent level needed to eradicate the disease.
"New Zealand does not look good," he said.
