A nurse administers a vaccine to a patient in 2021. Diphtheria cases are declining in Australia's Northern Territory after a vaccine blitz that involved immunizing more than 10,000 people. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo
May 26 (UPI) -- Health officials in Australia said Tuesday that testing showed a man's death in April was caused by diphtheria, the first such death in the country since 2018.
Officials in Australia's Northern Territory declared a diphtheria outbreak in March, but there have also been cases in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. There have been 245 cases in 2026, with 163 cases in the Northern Territory, officials said. Many of the cases are in more remote Indigenous communities.
"Our government has taken this situation very seriously, and we are working hard to understand the causes and working to contain the situation," Steve Edgington, the Northern Territory's health minister, told the BBC.
The NT government said that cases were declining after a vaccine blitz that involved immunizing more than 10,000 people, NT Chief Health Officer Paul Burgess told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
