Only 3% of a targeted 230,000 people have had a measles vaccination since the government launched a campaign last July to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of 15 to 30-year-olds who were not properly immunised against measles as children.
Dr Rawiri Jansen, a member of the government’s implementation advisory group ,says the measles vaccination programme has taken a back seat to other vaccine rollouts.
“We’ve been lost in the noise and so we’re in a very interesting year with respect to vaccinations."
The campaign has only reached a small fraction of its target of 230,000.
“We’ve just got to turn our attention to it, and we've got to work really hard on it and put it into context for people that it's one of many important vaccination programmes this year," Jansen says.