The Chair welcomed NHS Representatives, Susan Elden, Rylan Grocock and Eleanor Walker-Todd. An overview of the adult immunisations available was given to the Panel.

The PPP vaccination protects against pneumococcal infection. These infections can lead to pneumonia, blood poisoning and meningitis. All adults over the age of 65 and those with long-term conditions are eligible for this vaccination.

The second adult vaccination available is shingles. This is caused by reactivation of the chickenpox virus and the vaccine helps to reduce severity of the disease. This vaccine is available on the NHS to adults from 70 to 79 years of age.

The third vaccination that's available is a flu vaccination which is a seasonal vaccination that we offer every year to those aged 65 and above and also to those with long-term conditions again this helps reduce the spread of flu within the population and also reduces the severity efficiency of the disease

Currently London performs lower than the national average across all of our immunisation programs. Some of the reasons for this is that London has a highly mobile population, a large migrant population, and areas of high deprivation.

There are also marked differences in uptake across the vaccination programs between groups, and these tend to mirror patterns seen in inequalities for wider health outcomes.

In terms of the flu vaccine, overall uptake in Merton is similar to the rest of London, it's slightly higher than Southwest London for those aged 65 and above and similar to Southwest London for those with long-term conditions. Referring to the chart on page 13, uptake of flu also varies significantly by ethnicity.

PPV uptake in Merton is 65% which is slightly lower than the London average.

Shingles uptake is only 33% in Merton, which is lower than the London and Southwest London average.

We are laser focused on coverage and equity and we do need to work more with communities directly around awareness, and on the equity front we need to be thinking about those pockets of deprivation and working much more closely with our integrated care board colleagues and the Local Authority on how we can work within the populations where that uptake is low.

In response to questions from Panel Members, further information was given:

Asylum Seekers are included within the immunisation programmes, and all can access those and there is heavy outreach done within those communities locally and across the region.

With regards to languages, we have completed a language audit regionally, looking at what we already had that was translated and then where the gaps were. We collated that information and sent that back to UK HSA who produce those materials.

In terms of ethnicity - ‘white other’ is specific group that is really challenging because we don't have the data breakdown on who is included within that and so we work very closely with our local authorities but also with our integrated care boards to understand what white other communities look like.

National and Regional immunisation strategies are very near to being published.

The Chair thanked the NHS Representatives for their attendance and requested they return to a future meeting with an update and more data to see how things are progressing.