Australia has recorded its first diphtheria death in almost a decade as the country grapples with the worst outbreak of the vaccine-preventable disease in decades.<\/p>\n
In March, the Northern Territory (NT) declared an outbreak of diphtheria with cases also in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. Cases started rising in late-2025 with a sharp increase in February.<\/p>\n
This year, there have been 245 cases, marking the largest outbreak in Australia since 1991, mainly in remote Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, NT’s health minister said autopsy results from an overseas lab found diphtheria was the cause of a man’s death in April at Royal Darwin Hospital, the first such case since 2018.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the government has ramped up vaccination efforts in areas most at risk and the number of new cases was now falling, health officials said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Our government has taken this situation very seriously, and we are working hard to understand the causes and working to contain the situation,\u00a0\u00bb NT Health Minister Steve Edgington said.<\/p>\n
Since 30 March, there have been 10,407 vaccinations, he said.<\/p>\n
Between January last year and May this year, the NT reported 163 diphtheria cases with 48 respiratory cases and 115 cutaneous cases, which is spread via skin contact.<\/p>\n
In March, health officials in Western Australia (WA) confirmed two cases of respiratory diphtheria, the first time in more than 50 years that WA had recorded such cases.<\/p>\n
Sixty per cent of the cases this year are in the Northern Territory, followed by Western Australia with about 36%, with a few cases in South Australia and even fewer in Queensland.<\/p>\n
Authorities are urging affected communities to update their vaccinations, especially teenagers and adults who need to get booster shots.<\/p>\n
Health officials in the NT have set up pop-up clinics in Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs to raise awareness of the vaccination campaign, as vaccines are the \u00ab\u00a0most important measure for preventing, protecting and reducing transmission,\u00a0\u00bb NT Health said.<\/p>\n
Both strains of diphtheria – respiratory and cutaneous – are preventable via a vaccine, which is usually given to children – five doses between two months and four years old – with a booster between 12 and 13 years.<\/p>\n
Respiratory diphtheria often starts with fever or chills, a sore throat that can lead to breathing and swallowing difficulties, and be life-threatening.<\/p>\n
Cutaneous diphtheria usually causes infected sores or ulcers on exposed parts of the body which are slow to heal but rarely lead to severe illness.<\/p>\n
It is understood that the last reported diphtheria death was in 2018, according to the national broadcaster ABC.<\/p>\n
Last week, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Prof Michael Kidd declared diphtheria a communicable disease incident of national significance.<\/p>\n
The government also announced a AU$7.2m package to boost vaccinations and resources in affected areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia has recorded its first diphtheria death in almost a decade as the country grapples with the worst outbreak of the vaccine-preventable disease in decades. In March, the Northern Territory (NT) declared an outbreak of diphtheria with cases also in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. Cases started rising in late-2025 with a sharp increase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}