National Partnership on Essential Vaccines: performance report 2019–20

This report provides an assessment of state and territory performance against the performance benchmarks outlined in the National Partnership on Essential Vaccines (NPEV), for the third year of the agreement, covering the assessment period 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.

The NPEV is an agreement between the Commonwealth of Australia and the states and territories, which aims “to protect the Australian public from the spread of vaccine preventable diseases through the cost-effective and efficient delivery of immunisation programs under the National Immunisation Program”.

The performance benchmarks assessed in this report are:

1. an increase in vaccination coverage rates for 60–<63 month olds relative to the baseline;
2. an increase in the vaccination coverage rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in at least two of the following three age cohorts: 12–<15 months; 24–<27 months; and 60–<63 months, relative to the baseline;

4. an increase in vaccination coverage rates for 60–<63 month olds in four of the ten lowest vaccination coverage SA3 geographical areas in each jurisdiction, relative to the baseline; and

5. an annual decrease in the wastage and leakage rate for agreed vaccines, relative to the baseline.

Performance benchmark 3 requires the states and territories to increase HPV coverage for adolescent girls and boys, relative to the baseline. During this assessment period, the recommended dosing schedule for HPV changed from a three dose program to a two dose program. Under the NPEV, the states and territories were required to continue to implement the three dose HPV program until amendments were made to the National Immunisation Program (NIP). All states continued with the three dose program except for New South Wales who implemented a two dose program in advance of amendments to the NIP. For the third year of the agreement, all states and territories except for New South Wales were deemed to have met the requirements for benchmark 3.

A performance milestone of “provision of annual schools HPV immunisation data for the previous school year by 30 April each year” is also specified in the Agreement. For the third year of the Agreement, all states and territories achieved this milestone.

Two jurisdictions (Queensland and South Australia) met all 4 benchmarks assessed in this report.