Rotherham health chiefs plan vaccination push in deprived communities
Health chiefs are planning a targeted vaccination and cancer-screening drive in Rotherham communities where uptake remains stubbornly low.
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board today (September 2) backed the borough’s health protection priorities for 2026/27, following 75 infectious disease outbreaks affecting more than 500 people last year.
The programme will focus on improving childhood immunisation against illnesses including measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox and HPV.
Officials also want to increase flu vaccination among two and three-year-olds, pregnant women and vulnerable residents, while encouraging more eligible people to attend cervical, breast and bowel cancer screening.
Denise Littlewood, Rotherham Council’s health protection principal, said officials could identify individual GP practices where vaccination levels were lower than expected, allowing work to be focused on the communities most in need.
“We want to further increase uptake and reduce inequalities with regard to screening,” she told the meeting.
The programme forms part of a wider effort to prevent health protection services from reinforcing existing inequalities between Rotherham’s communities.
However, the meeting also heard that a serious Legionella problem at an unnamed social housing complex remains unresolved after appearing in successive annual reports.
Legionella bacteria can cause Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially serious form of pneumonia, when contaminated water droplets are inhaled.
Ms Littlewood described it as “very much still an ongoing outbreak” but said officials hoped to reach a resolution by the end of September.
“We still have got this social housing complex that’s got a serious Legionella issue,” she added.
She said officials were meeting the housing provider fortnightly and it was installing a continuous dosing system to treat the water supply.
Further health protection priorities include increasing awareness and screening for tuberculosis, particularly among underserved communities, and improving understanding of latent infections in the borough.
A new working group will also coordinate work to combat antimicrobial resistance and promote the appropriate use of antibiotics across health and care services.
Other planned measures include strengthening infection-control support for care homes, improving surveillance of emerging diseases and clarifying which agencies are responsible during outbreaks.
The council will also refresh its adverse-weather policy and continue work to improve emergency-response arrangements.