Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak to the report, Discussion paper on late effects of polio/post-polio syndrome, which was tabled in the House on Monday. I see some of my colleagues from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing here. This was an issue that we all felt very passionate about. We met with a group of people who, for a long time, had had their needs ignored and their voices not heard.

I hope that, as a result of the roundtable we had and the discussion paper we have issued, this will lead to them having a more powerful voice and their issues being considered by government.

This issue was first brought to my attention when I visited a constituent who was suffering the effects of postpolio syndrome, or the late effects of polio—either of those descriptions are used in relation to it. As she had aged, the impacts of the polio she had had when she was younger had resurfaced and become a lot greater. She had muscle weakness, and the normal ageing process of having a little bit of arthritis was extenuated. She was finding it really difficult to function around the house, and it was only because she had a very supportive environment within the home that she was able to do so.

I want to acknowledge the member for Parkes. He and I are both patrons and have been very involved in this issue over a period of time. It became really obvious to us that there was a large group of people who had suffered from polio, who had been victims of the virus that swept across our country right up until the 1960s. They had had treatment and had gone on with their lives but, as they had aged, the effects of it came back. It was also very obvious that GPs and other health professionals were not aware of the impact of it. Some of the medication given to people who have similar sorts of symptoms, even anaesthetics given to people with postpolio syndrome, can actually be fatal. There was this great lack of knowledge about the impact of the late effects of polio.

We held a roundtable in Melbourne, and I particularly want to acknowledge a couple of people who were involved in that. Firstly, I want to acknowledge Dr John Tierney OAM, National Patron of Polio Australia and former Liberal Party senator of this parliament. He has really shown to me his great concerns about this issue. In fact, he is a sufferer of the late effects of polio. He is very passionate about this issue. Secondly, I want to acknowledge Gillian Thomas, President, Polio Australia, who is confined to a wheelchair and has a number of side effects of the late onset of polio. As she has aged, she had found it more difficult but is still a very vital, dynamic woman who is out there arguing for polio and its effects to be recognised. You suffer the acute stage and then, later in life, you suffer the effects, to a lesser degree but in a very debilitating way. I think that, as a nation, we need to look at this issue and at getting some evidence on the table in relation to it.

The committee made three recommendations, and I will come to them a bit later. One of the things that I thought were overwhelming was the lack of information about polio and the number of people who are affected by it. I learned that, when medical students are being trained, they learn nothing about the late effects of polio.

This matter needs to be addressed at a medical level. I would encourage urban divisions, Medicare Locals to actually get the information out to medical practitioners—and this is mentioned in our recommendations—so they know it exists and that there are appropriate supports and treatments that need to be put in place and that it is not just a normal part of the ageing process. It is not a normal part of the ageing process and that needs to be recognised.

Not only do doctors need to be educated but the whole of the community. There needs to be information given to community organisations that there is this group of people who need special assistance. There are issues that relate to employment, because somebody who contracted polio in the early 1960s is a person we would hope would still be able to be gainfully engaged in the workforce. In a previous life, when I was a rehabilitation counsellor, I actually had a client who was suffering from the late effects of polio. He had come from a South American country. Whilst we do not have to deal with polio in Australia, there are many nations in the world where polio is still rampant in communities. People from those areas do come to Australia. So it is going to be an ongoing issue.

This person with whom I was working had worked in a manual area. He developed a weakness in his arm and could no longer undertake the work that he did in the past. We tried to organise some retraining for him and get him into a job, which we subsequently did.

Other things are associated with the late effects of polio and symptoms that not everybody understands. One of those is depression. Depression really accompanies the late effects of polio, as well as the physical debilitation. These are the types of issues that need to be raised and is the type of education that needs to be provided to doctors and health professionals, and people working in the community. Employers need to be aware that, as with anyone with a disability, a person may not have the physical strength or capabilities in a certain area, but they have a got a lot of other abilities. They need to be mindful of the fact that, if you give a person with a disability an opportunity to work, you will be well and truly repaid.

There are enormous costs associated with disability and with not dealing with it. The committee felt that dealing with the disability and the effects of the disability would be of great benefit from a cost perspective to the country, as well as from the perspective of providing a benefit to the person who is suffering from the late effects of polio. Of course, there are social and emotional impacts. Just having to struggle with those everyday activities that people without a disability can do without even thinking about it really creates problems.

I would like to turn to the recommendations in relation to the late effects of polio. Recommendation 1 is for the ABS or the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to look at some sort of mechanism to ask appropriate questions in the health disability survey to ascertain how many people in the community are suffering the late effects of polio so that we can get some feeling for the numbers that are out there and the numbers of people that this is impacting on. We felt that it was vitally important that we get some sort of knowledge base, and we thought that the ABS or the Australia Institute of Health and Welfare would be an appropriate body to collect this information. It is important to mention here that, when we had the polio epidemic in Australia, there were the people that had acute effects of polio and my grandfather was actually one of those. They ended up with quite severe disabilities, but there are other people who had polio that was nearly like the flu, and it is only by having proper tests that it can now be identified whether a person actually did contract polio when they were younger. So it is very important that we get this information base.

Our second recommendation is that relevant national boards consult with the key stakeholders, and that is looking at peak professional bodies and educators to ensure that students learn that there is such a debilitating disease as the late effects of polio so that they can develop best practice for the treatment and management of people that have the late effects of polio. We also recommended that Medicare Locals engage with Polio Australia and the state-based polio associations to raise awareness of the late effects of post-polio syndrome, and that was looking at health professionals and working with communities through education and for people that are in that group of people that have the late effects of polio. It was a discussion paper with some recommendations that I think are achievable. There is one area that I think we also should touch on, which is that we need to do a tiny bit more research into the late effects of polio, looking at how they have impacted on people's lives and if there is a way or a treatment that can be used to lessen the effects of the late effects of polio.

In conclusion, I would like say that as a society we are very lucky that we have managed to eradicate polio. We are very lucky that we will not have future generations suffering from the late effects of polio. We need to be vigilant as a country to ensure that all children are immunised and that polio does not re-emerge in Australia, and we also need to show compassion for those people that did contract polio back in the forties, fifties and sixties. I recommend the discussion paper to the House.

See this speech in context