John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Diabetes is an epidemic in Australia. According to JDRF, 127,000 Australians are afflicted with type 1 diabetes. Around 25,000 Australians are in the early stages or are undiagnosed. JDRF believes diabetes cost the governments and individuals $2.1 billion in 2020 alone. These figures are staggering.

While the numbers are huge, it's pleasing to note that diabetes is treatable and, perhaps remarkably, has been for a century. Back in 1921 when the world was fighting the last global pandemic, Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting discovered insulin and worked out the important role it played in preventing diabetes. Banting and his colleagues won the Nobel Prize for the effort, and millions of people around the world would agree that they were incredibly worthy recipients. While this first breakthrough was incredible and comparatively trailblazing in our early understanding of medicine, the diabetes world has not stood still. Insulin has been synthesised, continuous glucose monitoring has come in, and we're starting to see the advent of continuous monitoring combined with automatic insulin pumps which will essentially function as artificial pancreases.

I'm happy to say that the technological boom which we have seen in recent years is centred in Macquarie Park in Bennelong. We're home to Abbott, who make their FreeStyle glucose monitors which are removing the constant finger prick blood tests which are the bane of diabetics' lives. We also have Medtronic, who make the first diabetes pump available in Australia. Johnson & Johnson, who make a variety of diabetes devices, is based in Bennelong. None of these devices are any good without insulin to deal with the condition, which is where our pharmaceutical companies come in. Again, Bennelong is home to some of the biggest players in this market. Sanofi is one of the largest global insulin manufactures, and Eli Lilly has been part of the synthetic insulin process since the very beginning.

Diabetes treatment is currently experiencing a technological revolution. Established therapies are changing the lives of people with diabetes. If anything, the speed of this revolution is creating problems, as our bureaucracy struggles to keep up with the huge pace of innovation. I have had representations from people seeking access to a Bluetooth enabled tube feed insulin pump, Omnipod, which was approved by the TGA over a decade ago but remains unavailable here in Australia. Until it is approved and on the prosthesis list, the only way to get the treatment is to travel to Dallas, Texas, after receiving special approval—a long, expensive and arduous journey both in the physical and bureaucratic sense. This is clearly not feasible for many people with this condition. This is an example but certainly not the only innovative medicine or treatment that is coming down the pipeline. We need to have a regulatory process that is transparent and more agile to ensure that Australians aren't continuing to miss out when life-changing treatments are made available.

That said, one of the great innovations in recent years has been continuous glucose monitoring, CGM. Continuous and flash glucose monitoring is clinically proven to reduce average blood glucose concentrations, helping patients maintain a healthy range and avoid hypo- and hyperglycaemic events. Better glucose control is associated with better health. JDRF suggests that every dollar spent on CGM provision comes back 1.5 times, which will also go a long way to making up the huge economic cost of diabetes in Australia. The CGM Initiative, which was introduced in 2017, provides fully subsidised CGM products to those people with highest clinical and financial need, with approximately half of all Australians with type 1 diabetes now eligible to receive these products completely free of charge.

The NDSS and CGM initiatives are underpinned by the Australian National Diabetes Strategy 2016-20, which was released on 13 November 2015. What is really required now is commitment and leadership to shift the standard of care from outdated technology to the new standard of care. The government is currently updating the strategy to ensure it remains current and adaptive to the changes in the health environment that have occurred since its release. It is anticipated the updated strategy will be available mid-2021— (Time expired)

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