'I am deeply concerned': Health minister says serious measles outbreak could hit NZ soon

Health minister Dr Shane Reti, who is also the Minister for Pacific Peoples, is imploring Pacific families to get vaccinated given the risks a potential measles outbreak poses.

“All the evidences [we have] is that it will come towards us this year,” Reti told Levi Matautia-Morgan on 531pi’s Pacific Mornings.

“This is not trivial, people die from measles, young people die from measles - as they did in Samoa [in 2019] - so the vaccine is free and it protects you and your family from measles so please have your children vaccinated.”

As Reti points out, New Zealand’s last serious outbreak of measles in 2019 saw 2000 people catch the disease, with several hundred being hospitalised. The outbreak also spread to Samoa, where there were 83 measles-related fatalities.

“We're rated as a high risk by the WHO so all the warning signs are there. Let's remember in 2019, our last outbreak, the MMR [vaccination] rate much higher than we are today. So if we were to get a similar outbreak today, I would suggest the outcomes could be much worse than what we had in 2019.”

Along with asking Pacific families to get their kids the MMR vaccine, Reti announced $50 million initiative late last year which will primarily fund Māori and Pacific healthcare providers to rollout out vaccines in hard-to-reach communities.

“Through Māori and Pasifika health providers, we can utilize what [these] health providers are best at.

"They do and go places where mainstream cannot and so using those mechanisms to get into remote and rural communities and then to serve a universal audience, they will vaccinate Māori and non-Māori, Pacifica and anyone who's ready and willing and turns up with a shoulder, they will vaccinate.”

MPP funding cuts

In his Pacific Mornings interview, Reti also addressed the proposed seven per cent funding cut for Ministry for Pacific Peoples, which has been described as targeting “back office expenditure”.

Reti says he's in regular contact with ministry officials on this, but wouldn't say what services will be impacted.

“The chief executive is making her way through that, which is a direction across all government departments that cuts are going to need to be found. So I'm in close contact, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, with the ministry.

“And she is working diligently through that in a manner with great mana and integrity because we understand the challenge that goes with that.”

Watch the full interview with Dr Shane Reti below: