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Overseas kids miss vaccinations

Jab concerns: Overseas kids are miss vaccinations. Picture: Getty Images

Health authorities have discovered that almost one per cent of WA parents with children under the age of seven are "unregistered" vaccine refusers.

They are on top of the 2 per cent of parents officially listed as conscientious objectors on the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register.

The WA Health Department says 3 per cent of children aged under seven - about 7000 - had no vaccination history on the national register in 2013.

It was likely to have contributed to WA's low immunisation rates compared with other States.

The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, found that the most common reason for the missing details was because families had moved to WA from overseas and failed to list their children's vaccination status.

Just one per cent of children from overseas were fully immunised for their age and more than half were overdue for vaccinations against diseases such as chickenpox and meningococcal C.

A study by the department's communicable disease control unit found that 28 per cent of children with no vaccination details had parents who were unregistered conscientious objectors.

The biggest group of unimmunised children had incomplete vaccinations on the register because they had moved from overseas and their previous vaccinations had not been recorded.

"It is estimated that these children accounted for about 1.3 per cent of all kids younger than seven living in WA and registered with ACIR," the department said.

The department recommended that families from overseas who signed up for Medicare be strongly encouraged to add their children's immunisation details to the register and where necessary arrange catch-up vaccines.

The Federal Government recently announced it would withhold family tax benefits and childcare payments unless children were vaccinated and tightened the grounds for conscientious objection.