Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, would like to commend the member for Ryan for bringing this matter before the House. It is a very important issue, particularly when you consider the consequences for an ageing population. Shingles, as others have referred to, is a virus based on the chickenpox virus. At the moment, as I understand it, it impacts on about 150,000 Australians each year, principally older Australians aged above 60. In terms of those Australians aged above 85, it affects almost one in two. So it is something that is very much an issue to be considered.

One of those Australians affected was my father. He died a couple of years back. He died from the consequences of cancer. He also had very advancing dementia, but if he were alive today I am sure he would say that, of all the suffering he experienced, nothing came close to the suffering he experienced from shingles. The shingles he acquired manifested in his eye socket. He would almost go mad from the symptoms. Dad was a former police officer. I grew up never knowing him to have sick day. He was a very strong and very determined man and one who would rarely cast a shadow over the door of a doctor's surgery. So when he acquired shingles he decided he would ride it out. As most people would be aware, to treat shingles effectively you must treat it in the first 24 hours. So unfortunately for dad in his last six years of life, apart from the radiation for his cancer, it was very much shingles that really debilitated his quality of life.

To think that we now have a vaccine for shingles being brought forward is great. I wish it could be done earlier. I know that it is not planned to be brought onto the PBS until November next year, but for an ageing population, as we have here in this country, this is something that will change the lives of many people. That is something that has to be considered, as we look at the holistic aspects of medication that is being funded. A vaccine of this nature will change the lives of many. It will take away a lot of suffering, and if it can help ease the lives of people who will suffer as greatly as my father did, then that is a great contribution that this parliament could make to our community.

The virus, as has been indicated, really becomes manifest for those who have suffered chickenpox. I know that in the past one of the things about chickenpox—and this happened when I was growing up—was that you would make sure your child came in contact with kids with chickenpox, because in that generation it was thought that once you had it, you did not get it again. That is the way I suppose a generation of us were brought up, but the consequence of that is that once that virus is there, it remains in the body, in the spinal cord. For older Australians, as I said, it becomes less dormant, particularly for those aged above 60, and it mutates into shingles and delivers the effects of PHN in the body. This is something that, as I said earlier, is very debilitating. And the consequence of it is that it affects vast numbers of older Australians. Therefore, I am very happy to speak on the member for Ryan's motion. I am very please that she has brought this forward. It is something I have not really reflected upon for some time, not since my father's passing, but if this could make a difference in people's lives and reduce the degree of suffering that I had to witness, it would be a great thing.

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