"I was wrong": Pauline Hanson apologises for vaccination claims

Pauline Hanson has apologised for incorrectly claiming on Sunday that parents could conduct their own tests to evaluate vaccination safety.

“Yes, I do apologise,” she said. “As far as having tests done, OK, I admit I was wrong with that.”

Senator Hanson has been criticised by the Australian Medical Association and others for giving the incorrect impression that vaccines were not safe.

“All I’m saying to people that are concerned about it – you go and do your research, go ask questions of your doctor,” she told Channel Seven on Thursday.

Pauline Hanson voiced criticism of the government’s vaccination rules on the ABC’s Insiders program last week, sparking furious condemnation from health and medical groups.

She advised parents to test their children before vaccinations because some parents, she claimed, had reported problems with vaccines.

Hanson also argued that successive governments had “blackmailed” people into having their children vaccinated because of the policy of withholding childcare fee rebates and welfare payments from parents who don’t have their children fully immunised.

“What I don’t like about it is the blackmailing that’s happening with the government,” Hanson said. “Don’t do that to people. That’s a dictatorship. I think people have a right to investigate themselves.”

She later defended her comments saying they were her “personal opinion” and she acknowledged she had vaccinated her own children.

Hanson’s comments were also condemned by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

“If parents choose not to vaccinate their children, they are putting their children’s health at risk and every other person’s children’s health at risk too,” Turnbull said.

The president of the Australian Medical Association, Michael Gannon, told the ABC that Hanson needed to take responsibility for her position on vaccination.

“She needs to realise that she’s a serious player in Australian politics now,” he said. “You know, with 8, 9, 10% of Australians indicating an intention to vote for One Nation, she can no longer make fringe statements that are dangerous to the health of the whole community.”

“We know in medical science that we’re never going to reach that 1 or 2% of rusted-on flat-earthers who don’t accept the science of vaccination.

“But what we worry about a lot about is that about 8% of the population are so-called vaccine-hesitant, and they’re looking for any information that might lead them away from what is, with the exception of clean water, probably the most significant health measure we’ve got.

“It is absolutely essential that we have accurate information, and this fatuous idea that parents can spend half an hour on Wikipedia and come to a greater understanding of the issues than their doctor and the accumulated wisdom of all the world’s medical scientists is ludicrous.”

"I was wrong": Pauline Hanson apologises for vaccination claims

Vaccination skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr to chair vaccine safety commission

Donald Trump has asked Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent skeptic regarding the use of vaccines, to chair a commission on vaccination safety.

“President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies and he has questions about it,” said Kennedy, speaking with reporters after a meeting with the president-elect at Trump Tower on Tuesday.

“His opinion doesn’t matter but the science does matter, and we ought to be reading the science and we ought to be debating the science,” said Kennedy, the son of the late attorney general Robert Kennedy and nephew of late president John F Kennedy.

Childhood vaccines have been falsely linked to autism in recent years, despite multiple scientific studies proving that incorrect.

During a 2015 Republican debate, Trump claimed that a child of some employees of his had become autistic after getting vaccinated.

“People that work for me, just the other day, two years old, beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later, got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic,” Trump said in September 2015.

According to Kennedy, an environmental activist, radio host and attorney who has written for the Guardian, Trump has created a commission “on vaccine safety and scientific integrity” and asked him to chair it.

“Everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines that we have – he’s very pro-vaccine, as am I – but they’re as safe as they possibly can be,” Kennedy added.

Although Kennedy calls himself “pro-vaccine”, he has pushed hard against the use of thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccines made from mercury, launching a group called the World Mercury Project, backed by anti-vaxxers. He advocates that parents should choose whether their children are vaccinated.

In 2014, he edited a book titled Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury – a Known Neurotoxin – from Vaccines.

In 2015, he said Congress was stalling on investigating links between autism and the mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine because it was scared of Big Pharma, a trillion-dollar industry and the biggest employer of lobbyists.

When questioned what his father and uncle – leading lights in the 1960s Democratic party – would make of Trump as president, Kennedy said on Tuesday that Trump “can be any kind of president he wants to be”.

“He probably comes into office less encumbered by ideology or obligations than anybody that has been in political office or won the presidency,” Kennedy said.

The Guardian has contacted the Trump transition team to ask them to confirm the commission has been set up and to give further details.

Vaccination skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr to chair vaccine safety commission

"Worst case of chickenpox" sparks call for vaccination rethink

A mother whose two-year-old son spent five days in hospital fighting a severe case of chickenpox has called for anyone who wants them to get vaccinations on the NHS against the disease.

Sarah Allen urged ministers to rethink eligibility for immunisation, under which only those looking after children with a weakened immune system, for example because they are undergoing chemotherapy, can receive it.

Allen, a nursery manager in Cambridgeshire, spoke out after doctors said her son Jasper’s chickenpox was the worst case of the usually mild illness they had ever seen. The toddler became so ill last month that staff at Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, put him on an intravenous drip and gave him antibiotics, antiviral drugs and morphine.

Allen claims that Jasper was initially denied treatment when her GP practice refused to let her see a doctor. “When I first called our local GP’s surgery, I spoke to the receptionist to make an appointment for Jasper, but when I told her it was chickenpox, she said to me, ‘Every mother thinks their child has bad chickenpox.’ I knew I wasn’t being a neurotic mother. I have two children and have run a nursery and seen hundreds of kids with chickenpox before, so I knew this wasn’t normal.

“When Jasper was admitted to hospital, it was scary, but I was also relieved I was actually being taken seriously and that they were doing something about it. We couldn’t hold him for three days because he screamed every time we touched him.” Jasper’s chickenpox was so severe that he has had scans of his heart to ascertain whether he has suffered any long-term damage as a result, she added.

Immunisation against the disease is not part of the government’s childhood vaccination programme. Jabs are given only to adults and children who are in close contact with someone who is either immuno-suppressed or would otherwise be at risk if they got chickenpox.

Related: What’s the real reason Britons aren’t offered the chickenpox vaccine? | Jenny Rohn

Public Health England, which oversees NHS vaccination schemes, indicated that no change of policy was imminent. A spokesman added: “The expert advisory body the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is currently undertaking a review of a childhood vaccination programme against chickenpox in the UK, based on the available scientific evidence, including consideration of the cost-effectiveness of any programme. This review is likely to be concluded next year.”

Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust, which runs the children’s inpatient ward at Hinchingbrooke, where Jasper was treated, said in a statement that: “We can confirm Mrs Allen’s statement that Jasper Allen was treated on our children’s inpatient ward for five days with a severe case of chickenpox.”

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group, which oversees GP services in the area, said it could not comment on any individual patient’s treatment. It has not received a complaint from Allen about her local GP surgery refusing her an appointment. In a statement, it said: “Chickenpox is usually a mild illness from which most children recover on their own. Symptoms include a high temperature, aches and pains, and a rash of blisters. These usually pass within a week or two, and the blisters dry up and fade.

“The best treatment is to use soothing creams and/or appropriate doses of paracetamol to ease any discomfort, while keeping your child hydrated by giving them lots to drink.

“It is highly advisable that parents and carers keep a watchful eye on children who have chickenpox, as complications, although rare, can develop, especially in children who are very young, are on other medications, or who may have a weakened immune system.”

"Worst case of chickenpox" sparks call for vaccination rethink

Carly Fiorina Says Her Views On Vaccination Are Unremarkable For Better Or Worse, She"s Appropriate

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CLEAR LAKE, IA – AUGUST 14: Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina speaks with supporters even though getting into the Starboard Marketplace August 14, 2015 in Clear Lake, Iowa. Fiorina ate lunch at the restaurant and greeted patrons there before continuing to campaign in Iowa later in the afternoon. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty [...]

Carly Fiorina Says Her Views On Vaccination Are Unremarkable For Better Or Worse, She"s Appropriate

Afghan Taliban bans polio vaccination teams from southern Helmand

An Afghan health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The Afghan Taliban has banned polio vaccination teams from southern Helmand province because it suspects them of spying for the government at a time of heavy clashes with government forces, the insurgent group said in a statement on its website.

The announcement is a worrying development, because although Taliban groups across the border in Pakistan have attacked and killed polio vaccinators for years, their Afghan counterparts have mostly supported, or at least tolerated, international efforts to wipe out the disease.

The last time polio vaccinators were blocked from part of Afghanistan, the insurgent group denied any role and said it supported efforts to stop the disease.

Afghanistan is one of just three countries, along with Pakistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic. There has been a rise in cases this year, with seven reported so far compared with just three for the same period of 2013, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

The group said Helmand has been off limits to vaccinators since February, but did not give a reason. The southern province has seen fierce fighting between insurgent and government forces in recent weeks, and the Taliban’s statement was the first indication it had chased out polio eradication teams.

“We have stopped vaccination in Helmand for the moment,” the Taliban said in a statement posted on its website this week. “The vaccinators were also collecting information about the Taliban and Taliban commanders, they were spying.”

The statement said they had asked UN officials for talks but received no response; the UN’s humanitarian arm declined to comment when asked about the ban.

Health workers often negotiate access to difficult areas through village elders, and most Afghans are keen to protect their children from a disease which can kill or paralyse. The Taliban’s accusation that vaccinators were working as spies is a worrying new sign of hostility to efforts to wipe out the disease.

But there have for years been fears that the Pakistani Taliban’s opposition to polio vaccination campaigns, which militant leaders have banned at least three times since 2012, could influence Afghan groups.

The CIA’s decision to set up a fake vaccination programme as part of its hunt for Osama bin Laden fuelled militant suspicion of the global project to eradicate polio. The White House has since promised that the US will never again use vaccination programmes as a cover for spying.

Most polio cases in Afghanistan are believed to be the result of infections brought across the Pakistani border, but Afghans are still vulnerable because in some areas only two-thirds of children are immunised.

Afghan Taliban bans polio vaccination teams from southern Helmand

Afghan Taliban bans polio vaccination teams from southern Helmand

An Afghan health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The Afghan Taliban has banned polio vaccination teams from southern Helmand province because it suspects them of spying for the government at a time of heavy clashes with government forces, the insurgent group said in a statement on its website.

The announcement is a worrying development, because although Taliban groups across the border in Pakistan have attacked and killed polio vaccinators for years, their Afghan counterparts have mostly supported, or at least tolerated, international efforts to wipe out the disease.

The last time polio vaccinators were blocked from part of Afghanistan, the insurgent group denied any role and said it supported efforts to stop the disease.

Afghanistan is one of just three countries, along with Pakistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic. There has been a rise in cases this year, with seven reported so far compared with just three for the same period of 2013, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

The group said Helmand has been off limits to vaccinators since February, but did not give a reason. The southern province has seen fierce fighting between insurgent and government forces in recent weeks, and the Taliban’s statement was the first indication it had chased out polio eradication teams.

“We have stopped vaccination in Helmand for the moment,” the Taliban said in a statement posted on its website this week. “The vaccinators were also collecting information about the Taliban and Taliban commanders, they were spying.”

The statement said they had asked UN officials for talks but received no response; the UN’s humanitarian arm declined to comment when asked about the ban.

Health workers often negotiate access to difficult areas through village elders, and most Afghans are keen to protect their children from a disease which can kill or paralyse. The Taliban’s accusation that vaccinators were working as spies is a worrying new sign of hostility to efforts to wipe out the disease.

But there have for years been fears that the Pakistani Taliban’s opposition to polio vaccination campaigns, which militant leaders have banned at least three times since 2012, could influence Afghan groups.

The CIA’s decision to set up a fake vaccination programme as part of its hunt for Osama bin Laden fuelled militant suspicion of the global project to eradicate polio. The White House has since promised that the US will never again use vaccination programmes as a cover for spying.

Most polio cases in Afghanistan are believed to be the result of infections brought across the Pakistani border, but Afghans are still vulnerable because in some areas only two-thirds of children are immunised.

Afghan Taliban bans polio vaccination teams from southern Helmand

Vaccination sceptics group dumped charity standing ‘of its personal accord’

An anti-vaccination advocacy group has mentioned it was not stripped of its charity status but chose to give it up to close down one of the most significant avenues of complaints towards it.

The elimination of the Australian Vaccination-sceptics Network’s (AVSN) authority to gather donations was enacted just days right after the organisation misplaced an appeal and was forced to modify its identify.

The AVSN is routinely criticised for its fervent campaigning towards the immunisation of young children and advertising long-debunked science linking vaccinations to autism.

After an investigation by the New South Wales office of liquor, gaming and racing (OLGR) “highlighted a selection of prospective concerns”, the AVSN was asked to show cause why its authority to increase money under the Charitable Fundraising Act ought to not be eliminated. The network then chose to surrender it.

The investigation “sourced expert health-related proof challenging the accuracy of info supplied on the association’s site in relation to the risks and rewards of vaccination”, the NSW hospitality minister, George Souris, explained in a statement.

“The investigation highlighted a selection of potential considerations, including risks arising from the association’s anti-vaccination advocacy and the potential for misinformation to influence critical wellness choices resulting in probably adverse public health consequences.”

A spokesman for Souris explained the AVSN’s authority would have been stripped anyway had it not been surrendered.

The president of the group, Greg Beattie, told Guardian Australia the AVSN inherited its charitable status when it took over the Australian council for immunisation info, and had been attempting to get rid of it for years.

“We could have surrendered it at any time but the good personnel at the OLGR warned us if we did we wouldn’t be capable to increase any money,” Beattie stated.

He mentioned the organisation’s constitution and its “broad aims” painted AVSN as a charity but had not too long ago hindered the function of its legal staff interesting towards the order to change the organisation’s title, which was when the situation of its standing was revisited and reviewed.

“We’ve been celebrating ever because we shed that licence since the OLGR was a well-liked avenue of complaint for all of our complainants, [particularly] the Stop the AVN group.”

Beattie acknowledged there had been a amount of investigations into the AVSN, but explained it had “come up Okay every time”.

The NSW government statement mentioned an authority to increase money for a “charitable purpose” could be revoked in the public curiosity, which includes to prevent deception of charitably minded members of the public.

The NSW minister for honest trading, Stuart Ayres, warned the public not to donate to the AVSN in the release and again in statements to the ABC.

“We will carry on to ensure that they current themselves as an anti-vaccination advocacy,” he explained. “That’s entirely up to them to do that. We want to make positive that they don’t ever market misleading data.”

Ayres reiterated that the government produced the request for the AVSN to surrender its licence soon after considerations have been identified in its investigation.

Beattie advised Guardian Australia he was adamant the ABC’s report was not a correct quote and Ayres “wouldn’t have stated that”. Nevertheless, when referred to a tweet by Ayres repeating the warning, Beattie explained Ayres’s statement appeared “very improper”.

“It’s not his location to say that,” Beattie said. “If he did make people statements then I question why he’s meddling in affairs that really do not involve his ministry.”

The minister for health, Jillian Skinner, said “while NSW has a very high price of vaccination among children, we will continue to do all we can to shield these young children who stay unvaccinated”.

“Forget the scaremongering – there is absolutely nothing to worry from vaccination,” Skinner stated.

Vaccination sceptics group dumped charity standing ‘of its personal accord’

Pakistan to shell out parents in new polio vaccination drive

A Pakistani schoolgirl receives polio vaccine drops from a overall health employee. In Peshawar, eight,000 overall health staff will hit the streets to vaccinate practically 800,000 children in a single day. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP

Dad and mom in one particular of Pakistan’s most troubled provinces are to be paid to vaccinate their kids against polio, the crippling illness the planet is tantalisingly near to eradicating.

It is hoped some 2 million kids from some of the most disadvantaged places of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the north-western province wracked by Taliban violence, will benefit from the scheme.

Mother and father will be entitled to declare one,000 rupees (nearly £6) for every single little one who completes a 15-month programme of vaccinations that will protect them against a quantity of diseases which includes measles, hepatitis and polio.

It is the very first time the nation has resorted to financial incentives, which are hardly ever utilized around the globe.

Public well being officials battling childhood diseases face immense difficulties in KP, where militant attacks are a every day schedule, poverty is entrenched and many folks are deeply suspicious of programmes enthusiastically backed by western powers.

“It has to be a excellent sum of cash to be eye-catching, even in the extremely poorest districts of the province,” explained Janbaz Afridi, deputy director of the province’s expanded programme on immunisation. “If it is a success we will lengthen it to every single little one in the province.”

KP’s government, backed by UN agencies, is at present on a war footing against polio in certain simply because Peshawar, the province’s teeming capital, has turn into a international well being issue.

The historic frontier city is 1 of the last remaining redoubts of polio, the virus that cripples and kills children and which has been eradicated in every single nation except Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Situations from all around the planet, such as China and Syria, have been genetically matched to the Peshawar strain.

Last month the World Wellness Organisation declared the city the “greatest reservoir of endemic poliovirus in the globe”, a problem caused in component by the city’s open sewage channels and broken water pipes. Polio is spread through make contact with with human faeces.

Inside the neighbouring tribal areas, Peshawar acts as a central exchange and an “amplifier” for a condition carried in and out of the city by the tens of thousands of folks who pass through every day, which includes a huge population of refugees who fled Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“The difficulty with Peshawar is that we often have circumstances there,” explained Bilal Ahmed, a senior Unicef official in the city. “In other districts the virus comes and goes, but it in no way leaves Peshawar, which tells us it’s the source.”

The WHO says a lot more than 90% of circumstances all around the nation and in neighbouring Afghanistan are genetically linked to the city.

Of the world’s three polio-endemic nations, Pakistan is the only one in which the situation is receiving worse and circumstances are rising.

India, which this yr acquired its difficult-earned status as polio-cost-free, now turns away travellers from Pakistan unless of course they have a certificate proving they have been vaccinated. Other countries could adhere to suit.

The most recent push in Peshawar is an attempt to give polio vaccine drops to virtually every single little one below the age of five each and every weekend for 3 months.

It needs eight,000 wellness workers to hit the streets with the aim of vaccinating virtually 800,000 children in a single day.

4 thousand police officers will escort them to defend them towards the gunmen who have killed scores of polio vaccinators close to the country in current many years.

Throughout vaccination sessions, total neighbourhoods are place into lockdown, with motorbikes banned from the streets.

One particular risk is from the Taliban, who have utilised the international campaign to eradicate polio as a chip in their battle against the US.

In 2012 insurgent commanders in the restive tribal locations of North and South Waziristan banned polio teams from their territories in what they mentioned was retaliation for US drone strikes. Some religious clerics argue the drops are portion of a foreign plot towards the Islamic world to make Muslim kids infertile – a perception arguably created worse by international interest in the concern.

It really is a major problem for a campaign officials say needs to reach 97% of children to stand a chance of eradicating the ailment in the city.

Polio teams carry booklets of “fatwas”, or religious decrees, by well-known scholars who argue there is nothing wrong with the drops.

The government has also known as on large-profile clerics to assistance the programme.

“In public the mullahs are all on the same page now,” said one health official. “A lot of still will not like it but they will not preach openly against vaccination anymore.”

Some vaccinators say that whilst fewer dad and mom are refusing the drops for their children, several hide them indoors on vaccination days.

Public antipathy is even now easy to discover. Amir Zaada, a father going to the city with his three children from a distant element of the province, explained the vaccination programme was “just a game”.

“There are other fatal ailments, so why is the government only talking about this,” he asked, also raising the case of Shakil Afridi, a medical professional who ran a hepatitis vaccination campaign in the town of Abbottabad.

The programme’s motivation was not public well being but an elaborate scheme by the CIA to learn no matter whether Osama bin Laden was hiding in the town. His unmasking confirmed the worst suspicions of individuals inclined to see vaccinators as a western conspiracy.

Zaada mentioned he had no regrets not vaccinating his youngsters.

He explained: “Search at them. They are fine and in great wellness. Only God keeps them protected and healthier.”

Pakistan to shell out parents in new polio vaccination drive

Afghanistan launches polio vaccination drive after Kabul"s first situation given that 2001

An Afghan health employee administers polio vaccine to a kid in the course of a vaccination campaign in Kabul in 2010. Photograph: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Photographs

Afghan officials have launched a polio vaccination campaign after a young lady from Kabul was diagnosed with the condition – the capital’s first situation considering that the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the only nations in the planet in which polio stays endemic. But the amount of circumstances have declined considerably in Afghanistan in latest many years.

Dr Kaneshka Baktash, spokesman for the Afghan public health ministry, mentioned on Tuesday that a 3-12 months-old lady from eastern Kabul had contracted polio and was partially paralysed. He explained the woman had been diagnosed in Pakistan, the place she was brought by her household right after falling unwell.

Baktash stated the ministry had launched a vaccination campaign across the capital and in the location exactly where the woman was residing.

Afghanistan launches polio vaccination drive after Kabul"s first situation given that 2001