Emergency rooms across Australia are noticing a spike in children’s flu admissions, as a survey reveals one in six kids are unvaccinated.

Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital has had a 27 per cent increase in flu cases compared to the previous year, with many unvaccinated children requiring hospitalisation.

The survey of almost 2000 parents revealed 36 per cent were unaware healthy children could get seriously unwell from the flu.

The hospital’s national child health poll found 17 per cent of children would not be vaccinated against the flu this year, with some 22 per cent of parents still unsure whether they would vaccinate their kids.

National Child Health Poll director Anthea Rhodes said the research showed significant knowledge gaps among parents about the flu.

“Unfortunately, it means parents are unintentionally putting their kids at risk because they don’t have the right health information,” she said.

The research also found hesitant parents were twice as likely to say they did not know where to find trustworthy flu vaccine information online and three times as likely to distrust information from their child’s doctor or nurse.

Rhodes said this could be due to vaccine fatigue that had arisen since the Covid-19 pandemic.

But she said it was important to remember that vaccination cut the risk of catching the flu by 50 to 60 per cent and significantly reduced the severity of the illness.

She said even healthy children could get complications of heart, kidney and brain inflammation if not vaccinated against the flu.

The survey found one in six children had a needle phobia so intense their parents reported it prevented them from getting vaccinated.

Others said the vaccine was too costly or they just didn’t have the time.

Rhodes said while programs through local councils and GPs were available, more research was needed to investigate whether the flu vaccine could be introduced to the school immunisation rollout.

“In the UK, for example, they do have school-based programs where they have an intranasal flu vaccine product,” she said.

“One of the main challenges for Australia to date has been getting that product available to enable delivery in schools, because the flu strain changes each season.

“But certainly in the future we are continuing to work towards solutions like that would be a really big game changer for families when it comes to the flu.”

It is not too late to vaccinate, she said.

In Victoria, flu vaccinations are free for children until they turn five. Older family members can generally receive the vaccine for low cost.

Western Australia and Queensland offer free flu vaccinations for all age groups but this initiative has not been adopted nationwide.

-AAP