Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the motion on tuberculosis put forward by the member for Leichhardt, and acknowledge his long and persistent passion for this particular issue. Friday was World Tuberculosis Day, and the World Health Organization is reporting that last year 10.4 million people fell ill with tuberculosis. 2017 is the second year of a two-year Unite to End TB campaign, and the World Health Organization is placing emphasis on an effort to 'leave no one behind', which will include efforts to address stigma and discrimination.

Closer to home, in WA, the Western Australia Tuberculosis Control Program is housed at the Anita Clayton Centre. This program manages tuberculosis in WA and offers a statewide public health service that operates as a resource centre and clinic. This program provides a range of services as well as the diagnosis, treatment and case management of tuberculosis. The program provides surveillance and prevention of tuberculosis, with active screening of high-risk groups, and diagnosis and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection. The program also looks after tuberculosis infection control by providing, in healthcare settings, advice and assistance on tuberculosis. The program also looks after the development, implementation and review of policy relevant to tuberculosis management and control, which is important, because tuberculosis is the world's leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. In 2015, 1.8 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis and 10.4 million people became sick with the disease.

The member for Leichhardt's motion makes an interesting point. It says that Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis infection in the Pacific, with an estimated 33,000 total cases, including 2,000 drug-resistant cases in 2015. In 2009 I was on the Committee on Health and Ageing when we did a report on health in the South Pacific. I would like to quickly relate to you a story about that visit. When were in the South Pacific we met a woman from Rockingham in Western Australia who ran the only clinic on Saibai Island. She shared with us some experiences and stories of PNG nationals who had crossed the short stretch of water by canoe to get to the clinic. One such national had been trying for four months to get into the clinic on Saibai Island. Eventually, on the day he had his scheduled visit, he collapsed in the waiting room. They revived him and sent him down to Thursday Island the next day for treatment, where he died. He had been waiting for four months to get in and due to a lack of resources and funding he could not. The causes of his death were HIV and tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis is an infection primarily in the lungs caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is spread from person to person by breathing infected air during close contact. The most common symptoms of tuberculosis are fatigue, fever, weight loss, coughing and night sweats. When the immune system of a patient with dormant tuberculosis is weakened it can become active or reactive and cause infection in the lungs or other parts of the body. As such, people with HIV-AIDS are at a high risk of developing the disease, due to lower immunity, like that man I just spoke about.

Tuberculosis is a leading cause of death worldwide. With the considerable movements of people between the Top End of Australia and the South Pacific, many of which have been part of the culture for many years, this is an area that we must be mindful of and cannot neglect. Another example occurred at the time we were running part of this inquiry in Cairns. A woman who was found to have drug-resistant tuberculosis was put into an isolation ward in Cairns Hospital, where her term of stay was predicted to be two years. Tuberculosis is a global health problem in which Australia has a responsibility and the capacity to make a difference. Australia has been successful in treating it at home. However, Australians are not immune to future outbreaks of tuberculosis and we must have appropriate policies in place to deal with this.

World Tuberculosis Day can also serve as a reminder of the importance of vaccinations. The coalition government bought in the No Jab, No Pay policy where parents whose children were not vaccinated and who did not have a valid medical exemption or were not on a catch-up schedule by a certain date would start incurring a debt for child care payments that they would have to repay. Since the policy was announced in the May budget we have seen a huge lift in immunisation rates across the country. As of November last year a further 187,695 children were up to date with their immunisations. This shows that parents are increasingly recognising the value and importance of immunisation. I commend this motion and again thank the member for Leichhardt and other members in this place who have spoken on this particular issue.

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