Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am so pleased that the Abbott government will invest $1.3 billion in listing new medicines and vaccines that are going to save lives and help thousands of Australians manage debilitating conditions like shingles—and the aftermath of shingles, which can include the most debilitating and painful of conditions. I commend the member for Ryan for this motion. I think it is very important that we recognise that shingles and postherpetic neuralgia can cause terrible, debilitating pain for hundreds of thousands of Australians. We are now going to make prevention of shingles possible through vaccination. This is the most effective way to reduce the number of Australians suffering either from shingles or from what we call PHN—one of the neuralgic conditions that can affect older people in particular.

You can get the vaccine now, but it costs over $200. A lot of older Australians simply cannot afford a vaccine that costs $200—in addition, perhaps, to the cost of going to the medical practitioner. This measure will enable older Australians, those over 70, to access this vaccine. It is a shame that it is going to take a fair while—I understand it will perhaps be over a year—to have the vaccine available for the National Immunisation Program. But we are told by the Department of Health that they need to procure the vaccine, develop a communications strategy, plan safety surveillance and undertake negotiations with the states and territories. That is unfortunate. It is a problem.

I know that one of the issues with shingles is that you should get attention urgently, as soon as you recognise the symptoms—the rash, the pain or the itching. If you do not get assistance very quickly, within the first 24 hours, the shingles condition can become much worse and much more prolonged. It can potentially lead to the terrible consequences of the PHN condition. For elderly people, who often are not able to get to a doctor quickly or who might not be aware of the symptoms, this vaccine will be critical. It means the elderly will not have to have someone who communicates with them rushing them to a doctor; they will have been vaccinated against this condition.

I am particularly aware of how serious this condition can be, because one of my father's dearest friends—who was the only other survivor of his Bomber Command crew shot down over Germany—contracted shingles when he was in his nineties and then, unfortunately, developed the most terrible complication of shingles: persistent, chronic neuropathic pain, known as postherpetic neuralgia, or PHN. This affected his face in particular. While he had had other health issues, including renal issues and of course the consequences of his horrific experience during the Second World War, he said to my father that he could bear all of that but that what he found almost impossible to bear was the pain of the herpetic neuralgia on his face. It made his life unbearable. I think if he had been able to access that vaccine, which we will now have available to 71- to 79-year-olds, he might have lived his last few years without that incredible pain. The condition affected his face and his eyes in particular, so he felt less able to go out and socialise with other people. This vaccine would have been an enormous advantage to a man like him, and of course there are so many other older sufferers of this condition.

Of course, the whole business of shingles relates to getting chicken pox in your younger years; it has to have been in your system. In Australia you can be immunised against chicken pox, so I strongly recommend that all Australian parents also look at the good effect of having your children immunised against the very common childhood disease of chicken pox. The disease of chicken pox leads to the virus; it can be activated as shingles in later life.

So, there are a lot of things we can do about this condition, and I am so pleased to be part of a government that recognised this and that the shingles vaccine Zostavax will now be on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. I am pleased that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended back in November 2014 that it be put on this scheme. We can and will do something about this. We know where our priorities lie. I commend this motion to the House.

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