Excerpted from The West Australian
Article by Katie Hampson
Published 9 November 2022
With research showing vaccine hesitancy leads to people dying needlessly, the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health has started providing health education sessions in more than 25 languages across eight Australian locations to lower vaccine hesitancy among migrant and refugee groups.
The Health in My Language Project manager Dr Regina Torres-Quiazon says people who died of COVID during the pandemic had an age-standardised death rate that was 2.5 times higher if they were born overseas than if they were born in Australia.
“We know from our long history of working with migrant communities that many of these deaths could have been prevented through culturally tailored, in-language information and education,” Dr Torres-Quiazon adds.