Australia’s trusted immunisation experts
14 August 2026 | NewsHonouring Indigenous knowledge: immunisation and the UN International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples 2026Read the full article
By Kelly Trudgen, National Indigenous Immunisation Lead, NCIRS and Gumbaynggirr Nation woman
Each year on 9 August, the world marks the United Nations (UN) International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, recognising the contributions Indigenous peoples make to the world’s cultural and environmental heritage, while raising awareness of the discrimination, poverty and human rights violations many still face.
This year’s global theme, Honouring Indigenous Midwives: Safeguarding Life and Well-being, is fitting for those of us working in public health, immunisation research and vaccine delivery because it speaks to something we see every day: Indigenous knowledge holders and health workers are often the reason care reaches communities at all.
At NCIRS, this day sits close to home in more ways than one. While I am not a midwife, as a nurse immuniser, I am dedicated to the equitable access of vaccines for all Indigenous peoples to safeguard life and wellbeing.
The NCIRS Global Health team works across the Asia-Pacific region to support immunisation access and health education alongside many Indigenous and First Nations partners. Closer to home, my own role focuses on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander immunisation and Closing the Gap. The thread connecting both is the same: sustainable improvements in vaccination coverage are achieved with communities, not delivered to them.
Just as the UN theme honours midwives as trusted knowledge holders who safeguard life within their own communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals, community-controlled health services and immunisation providers play that same trusted role in protecting our people from vaccine preventable diseases.
In Australia, the role of Indigenous midwives in immunisation begins earlier than many people realise. A baby’s first vaccine, the hepatitis B birth dose, is typically given within the first 24 hours of birth. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies, this dose is often given by the midwife caring for that family.
Maternal immunisation extends this protection even further. Vaccination during pregnancy against diseases such as pertussis and influenza protects babies even before they are eligible for their own vaccinations.
Beyond this immediate clinical role, research from Western Australia has shown that midwives are uniquely placed to build vaccine confidence throughout pregnancy and help sustain that confidence into the childhood vaccination schedule after hospital discharge. This is particularly important given that some of the lowest childhood vaccination coverage rates in the country have been recorded among Aboriginal children in urban settings such as Perth.
When that midwife is also an Indigenous woman walking alongside her own community, that trust runs deeper again.
Australia is currently experiencing its largest diphtheria outbreak since national reporting began in 1991, with more than 90% of cases occurring among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, concentrated in remote and very remote parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
At the same time, NCIRS’ 2025 coverage data show a national decline in adolescent vaccination, including HPV and meningococcal ACW, with the sharpest falls among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adolescents.
These aren’t separate stories. They’re a reminder that the gains our communities have fought hard for can be lost quickly when systems don't hold, and that closing these gaps takes more than a catch-up campaign – it takes sustained, community-led investment.
Across the world, Indigenous peoples remain largely invisible in immunisation data. Although global monitoring systems track vaccination coverage and inequities, they rarely report outcomes by Indigenous status. In some countries, Indigenous status is not collected at all, making it difficult to understand whether vaccination programs are reaching Indigenous communities.
The absence of data means that gaps may exist without being recognised, measured or addressed.
Globally, an estimated 13.5 million children received no vaccines in 2025, and the Western Pacific region remains furthest behind its pre-pandemic coverage levels of any World Health Organization (WHO) region. Yet the extent to which that burden falls on Indigenous children and communities is largely unreported.
This lack of visibility reflects broader issues of recognition, representation and Indigenous self-determination in data systems, with research and surveillance being only one part of the response.
Addressing these challenges and strengthening the evidence base across the Asia-Pacific region requires investing in research and surveillance, alongside ensuring Indigenous peoples are respectfully identified in health information systems, partnering with communities to generate meaningful data, and supporting Indigenous leadership in defining what health equity looks like.
In Australia, providing equitable access to vaccines for all Indigenous peoples means backing community-controlled health services and Aboriginal Health Workers as the trusted frontline of vaccination delivery, not an add on to mainstream programs.
It means researchers and surveillance teams working in partnership with communities to fix the data gaps that leave our outbreaks and coverage declines under-explained. It means immunisation providers taking the time to understand the specific access barriers our Mob face – distance, workforce shortages, past experiences of the health system – rather than treating non-vaccination as a simple compliance problem.
Regionally, community-led leadership is already taking shape. NCIRS’ Global Health team supports National Immunisation Technical Advisory Groups across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, has supported human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination initiatives – including the Solomon Islands’ catch-up campaign for adolescent girls, contributes to work that strengthens evidence and policy for HPV vaccination in low- and middle-income countries, and partners with WHO to strengthen measles and rubella surveillance in Fiji and the Solomon Islands.
Although these initiatives span different diseases and settings, they are underpinned by the same principle, at home and across the region: supporting locally led, culturally grounded immunisation programs that are responsive to community needs are critical to closing the gap.
On this International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, I want to acknowledge our own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workforce who support the delivery of vaccines to our communities – often against the tide of rising vaccine preventable disease case numbers and falling coverage. Their knowledge and trust in community are not a workaround for a stretched health system; it is what makes immunisation work at all. Backing it, properly and sustainably, is how we close these gaps for good.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Shane Parker, Global Health Communications and Media Manager, NCIRS, for his valuable insights into the work of the Global Team and contribution to this piece.
Learn more
