Health professionals are planning an urgent move to incentivise an increase in pneumonia vaccination rates among older Australians.
Statistics show a decrease of 50 percent in the number of seniors who take the vaccine to prevent the disease, a disease that claims 200 elderly lives each year.
Pneumonia can be caused by virus, bacteria or fungi causing the small air sacs of the lungs to fill with pus and fluid, making breathing painful, causing coughing and limiting oxygen intake.
Dr Menzies from UNSW’s Vaccine and Infection Research Lab believes GP’s should promote the one-off vaccine, with the preventable infection responsible for more than 8000 hospitalisations each year among those aged over 65.