Labor calls on Malcolm Turnbull to guarantee that he won’t privatise the confidential vaccination records of Australia’s school children.
A tender for the establishment of the Australian School Vaccination Register could mean that, for the first time, the vaccination details of school children could be in for-profit hands.
Malcolm Turnbull has already awarded a contract for Australians’ cancer screening records to a for-profit company, now he must rule out doing the same with our children’s vaccination records.
Nobody believes Malcolm Turnbull when he says he won’t privatise Medicare. He is already selling off important health functions. This is just the beginning of his privatisation agenda.
The Australian School Vaccination Register should only be run by government or a not-for-profit organisation.
The National Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Vaccination Program Register collects details about the HPV vaccinations given to all 12 and 13-year-olds through schools, through the National HPV Vaccination Program.
From the 2017 school year, the HPV Register will be expanded to become the Australian School Vaccination Register, which will capture all adolescent vaccinations given through school programs.
The National HPV Register is currently operated by the Victorian Cytology Service – a not-for-profit health promotion charity. Australia’s other immunisation register, the Childhood Immunisation Register is operated by the Commonwealth Government.
Last year Labor supported changes to create Australia’s first comprehensive national vaccination register.
These changes did not include any plan to privatise the running of the register, which is run by government and a not-for-profit entity.
Handing this sensitive data over to a for profit company would be just another example of the Liberals’ approach to health and putting profit over patients.
Such highly sensitive personal data should not be in the hands of for-profit companies.