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Perth alternative school slammed for refusing to support to vaccinate students

The head of the WA branch of Australia's peak medical body has slammed a Perth alternative school's inaction after a measles case at the school - attended by a large number of unvaccinated children - became public on Sunday.

The Perth Waldorf School in Bibra Lake has not responded to the WA government's offer of a mobile clinic to immunise vulnerable students, according to ABC News.

It has also transpired that the school's administrator previously ran for parliament on a platform opposing a no-jab, no-play government health campaign restricting childcare placements for unvaccinated children.

The WA Health Department has issued a measles alert after a confirmed diagnosis for an unvaccinated secondary school student who returned to Perth after being infected overseas. 

The department warned that a substantial number of students exposed at the school had not been vaccinated against measles, and because the school has a metropolitan-wide catchment, it's likely additional cases of measles will occur in Perth over the coming weeks.

AMA WA president Omar Khorshid told 6PR's Gareth Parker that schools should not only be responsible for children's education, but also for positive health outcomes such as promoting vaccination, healthy diets and activity.

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Kim, a mother of a child attending the Bibra Lake Waldorf School, said "it was up to the individual to vaccinate".

She said she was not worried about the threat of a measles infection to her child.

"If my child was to get the measles I'm sure she can fight it off, it's a childhood disease after all. We are living in a modern world, we are probably not going to get measles from this one child," she said.

"It is very unfair to be attacking the school."

Mr Khorshid said it was "absolutely critical" to maintain vaccination rates against measles, a disease thousands of people were dying of worldwide every year.

The campus of the Perth Waldorf School also includes pre-school and primary school students, and the department said it cannot exclude the possibility of incidental exposure to younger students.