00:02Diphtheria is back.
00:04The highly contagious and once nearly eradicated disease
00:07now spreading across the country,
00:09particularly in First Nations communities.
00:12It is everywhere. Everyone living in every community
00:15needs to be getting vaccinated, getting boosters.
00:31Locally, efforts intensify to get people vaxxed.
00:34A pop-up vaccination clinic at Larrapinta Valley Town Camp
00:38in Alice Springs today, as authorities race to vaccinate
00:42or boost up to 9,000 people in Central Australia.
00:45People get vaccinated all over the world for various different things
00:48and it's good that Tungjira and Congress have worked together
00:52to make sure that everyone in the town camps
00:54can get vaccinated and stay safe.
00:57The disease that affects the nose, throat, airways or skin on the rise.
01:02There have been 133 reported cases in the Northern Territory so far,
01:07including one likely death, along with 79 cases in Western Australia,
01:12six cases in South Australia and up to five cases in Queensland.
01:16The federal government worried.
01:18We're very concerned about this.
01:20This is probably the biggest diphtheria outbreak
01:23we've seen certainly for decades.
01:25I was up in Alice Springs a couple of weeks ago
01:28meeting with the Aboriginal Medical Service for the Northern Territory.
01:33They're obviously deeply, deeply concerned.
01:35Almost all of the cases are Indigenous Australians.
01:38Workforce shortages a barrier.
01:40So we're going into this outbreak on the background
01:43of a very diminished workforce in the first place,
01:47which makes it even more difficult to redeploy staff
01:50to deal with something like this.
01:52Authorities increasingly anxious to stop the spread.
01:56I'm not sure the support of the people that are deaf.
01:57So we have to ensure that there are young people
01:58who've been deaf,
01:58who are deaf and deaf,
01:59who are deaf,
01:59who are deaf,
01:59who are deaf.
01:59You
Comments